THE  ROBERT  E.  COWRN  COLLECTION 


I'RKSKNTEI)    TO    THK 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CHLIFORNIA 


CALIFORNIA, 


ITS 


CHARACTERISTICS  AND   PROSPECTS. 


[From  the  New  Eng lander  for  February,  1858.] 


*  ••  '  } .. 


CALIFORNIA, 


ITS 


CHARACTERISTICS  AND   PROSPECTS. 


[From  the  New  Englander  for  February,  185fe.] 


7**** 

California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.     [Feb. 


CALIFORNIA,  ITS  CHARACTERISTICS  AND  PROSPECTS. 

WHOEVER  wishes,  for  health's  sake  or  for  any  other  reason,  to 
change  the  sceneries  or  the  objects  and  associations  of  his  life, 
should  set  off,  not  for  Europe,  but  for  California.  And  this 
the  more  certainly,  if  he  is  a  loving  and  sharp  observer  of 
nature  ;  for  nature  meets  us  here  in  moods  entirely  new ;  so 
that  we  have  even  to  make  her  acquaintance  over  again ; 
going  back,  as  it  were,  to  be  started  in  a  fresh  childhood. 
All  our  common,  or  previously  formed  impressions,  calcula 
tions  and  weather-wisdoms  are  at  fault.  We  find  that  we 
really  understand  nothing  and  have  everything  to  learn.  We 
begin  to  imagine,  for  example,  that  her  way  is  to  be  thus,  or 
thus  ;  or  that  her  operations  are  to  be  solved  in  this,  or  that 
manner,  but  we  very  soon  discover  that  it  will  not  hold.  Our 
guess  must  be  given  up  and  we  must  try  again.  A  person 
who  is  at  all  curious,  in  the  study  of  natural  phenomena,  will 
be  held  in  a  puzzle  thus  for  whole  months,  and  will  nearly  com 
plete  the  cycle  of  the  year,  before  he  seems  to  himself  to  have 
come  into  any  real  understanding  with  the  new  world  he  is  in ; 
just  as  if  he  were  on  a  visit  to  Jupiter  and  wanted  to  sail 
round  the  sun  with  him,  for  at  least  once,  and  feel  out  his  year, 
before  he  can  be  sure  that  he  understands  a  single  day. 

California  being  to  this  extent  a  new  world,  having  its  own 
combinations,  characters,  and  colors,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed 
that  we  can  make  any  reader  acquainted  with  it  by  words  of 
description.  The  most  we  can  hope  to  accomplish  is,  that  by 
giving  some  notes  on  its  physical  and  social  characteristics,  we 
may  excite  a  more  curious  and  possibly  a  more  intelligent 
interest  in  California  life,  and  the  certainly  great  scenes  pre 
paring  to  be  revealed  in  that  far  off,  outside,  isolated  state  of 
the  Republic.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  every  particular 
representation  or  suggestion  we  may  offer  will  be  verified  by 
the  experiments  and  exact  .observations  of  science,  or  by  the 
tests  of  moral  and  economical  statistics  ;  we  only  look  on  with 


fort  Library 


1858.]     California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  3 

our  mere  eyes,  giving  our  impressions,  and  venturing  what 
guesses  and  possible  explications  may  occur  to  us. 

The  first  and  most  difficult  thing  to  apprehend  respecting 
California  is  the  climate,  upon  which,  of  course,  depend  the 
advantages  of  health  and  physical  development,  the  growths 
and  their  conditions  and  kinds,  and  the  modus  operandi,  or 
general  cast,  of  the  seasons.  But  this,  again,  is  scarcely  possi 
ble,  without  dismissing,  first  of  all,  the  word  climate,  and  sub 
stituting  the  plural,  climates.  For  it  cannot  be  said  of  Cali 
fornia,  as  of  New  England,  or  the  Middle  States,  that  it  has  a 
climate.  On  the  contrary,  it  has  a  great  multitude,  curiously 
pitched  together,  at  short  distances,  one  from  another,  defying 
too,  not  seldom,  our  most  accepted  notions  of  the  effects  of 
latitude  and  altitude  and  the  defenses  of  mountain  ranges. 
The  only  way,  therefore,  is  to  dismiss  generalities,  cease  'to 
look  for  a  climate,  and  find,  if  we  can,  by  what  process  the 
combinations  and  varieties  are  made ;  for  when  we  get  hold  of 
the  manner  and  going  on  of  causes,  all  the  varieties  are  easily 
reducible. 

To  make  this  matter  intelligible,  conceive  that  middle  Cali 
fornia,  the  region  of  which  we  now  speak,  lying  between  the 
head  waters  of  the  two  great  rivers,  and  about  four  hundred 
and  fifty  or  five  hundred  miles  long  from  north  to  south,  is 
divided  lengthwise,  parallel  to  the  coast,  into  three  strips,  or 
ribands  of  about  equal  width.  First,  the  coast-wise  region, 
comprising  two,  three,  and  sometimes  four  parallel  tiers  of 
mountains  from  five  hundred  to  four  thousand,  five  thousand, 
or  even  ten  thousand  feet  high.  Next,  advancing  inward,  we 
have  a  middle  strip,  from  fifty  to  seventy  miles  wide,  of  almost 
dead  plain,  which  is  called  the  great  valley  ;  down  the 
scarcely  perceptible  slopes  of  which,  from  north  to  south,  and 
south  to  north,  run  the  two  great  rivers,  the  Sacramento  and 
the  San  Joaquim,  to  join  their  waters  at  the  middle  of  the 
basin  and  pass  off  to  the  sea.  The  third  long  strip,  or  riband, 
is  the  slope  of  the  Sierra  Nevada  chain,  which  bounds  the 
great  valley  on  the  east,  and  contains  in  its  foot-hills,  or  rather 
in  its  lower  half,  all  the  gold  mines.  The  upper  half  is,  to  a 


4  California^  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.     [Feb. 

great  extent,  bare  granite  rock,  and  is  crowned,  at  the  summit, 
with  snow,  about  eight  months  of  the  year. 

Now  the  climate  of  these  parallel  strips  will  be  different 
almost  of  course,  and  subordinate,  local  differences,  quite  as 
remarkable,  will  result  from  subordinate  features  in  the  local 
configurations,  particularly  of  the  seaward  strip  or  portion. 
For  all  the  varieties  of  climate,  distinct  as  they  become,  are 
made  by  variations  wrought  in  the  rates  of  motion,  the 
courses,  the  temperature,  and  the  dryness  of  a  single  wind ; 
viz,  the  trade  wind  of  the  summer  months,  which  blows 
directly  inward  all  the  time,  only  with  much  greater  power 
during  that  part  of  the  day  when  the  rarefaction  of  the  great 
central  valley  comes  to  its  aid ;  that  is  from  about  ten  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  to  the  setting  of  the  sun.  Conceive  such  a 
wind,  chilled  by  the  cold  waters  that  have  come  down  from 
ffie  Northern  Pacific,  perhaps  from  Behring  Straits,  combing 
the  tops  and  wheeling  round  through  the  valleys  of  the  coast 
wise  mountains,  crossing  the  great  valley  at  a  mucli  retarded 
rate,  and  growing  hot  and  dry,  fanning  gently  the  foot-hills 
and  sides  of  the  Sierra,  still  more  retarded  by  the  piling  neces 
sary  to  break  over  into  Utah,  and  the  conditions  of  the  Califor 
nia  climate,  or  climates,  will  be  understood  with  general 
accuracy.  Greater  simplicity  in  the  matter  of  climate  is  im 
possible,  and  greater  variety  is  hardly  to  be  imagined. 

For  the  whole  dry  season,  viz,  from  May  to  November,  this 
wind  is  in  regular  blast,  day  by  day,  only  sometimes  approach 
ing  a  little  more  nearly  to  a  tempest  than  at  others.  It 
never  brings  a  drop  of  rain,  however  thick  and  rain-like  the 
clouds  it  sometimes  drives  before  it.  The  cloud  element, 
indeed,  is  always  in  it.  Sometimes  it  is  floated  above,  in  the 
manner  commonly  designated  by  the  term  cloud.  Sometimes, 
as  in  the  early  morning,  when  the  wind  is  most  quiet,  it  may 
be  seen  as  a  kind  of  fog  bank  resting  on  the  sea-wall  moun 
tains,  or  rolling  down  landward  through  the  insterstices  of 
their  summits.  When  the  wind  begins  to  hurry  and  take  on 
less  composedly,  the  fog  becomes  blown  fog,  a  kind  of  lead 
dust  driven  through  the  air,  reducing  it  from  a  transparent  to 
a  semi-transparent  or  merely  translucent  state,  so  that  if  any 


1858.]    California^  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  5 

one  looks  up  the  bay,  from  a  point  twenty  or  thirty  miles 
south  of  San  Francisco,  in  the  afternoon,  he  will  commonly  see, 
directly  abreast  of  the  Golden  Gate  where  this  wind  drives  in 
with  its  greatest  power,  a  pencil  of  the  lead  dust  shooting  up 
wards  at  an  angle  of  thirty  or  forty  degrees,  (which  is  the  aim 
of  the  wind  preparing  to  leap  the  second  chain  of  mountains, 
the  other  side  of  the  bay,)  and  finally  tapering  off  and  vanish 
ing,  at  a  mid-air  point  eight  or  ten  miles  inland,  where  the  in 
creased  heat  of  the  atmosphere  has  taken  up  the  moisture,  and 
restored  its  complete  transparency.  This  wind  is  so  cold,  that 
one  who  will  sit  upon  the  deck  of  the  afternoon  steamer  pass 
ing  up  the  Bay,  will  even  require  his  heaviest  winter  clothing. 
And  so  rough  are  the  waters  of  the  Bay,  land-locked  and  nar 
row  as  it  is,  that  sea-sickness  is  a  kind  of  regular  experience, 
with  such  as  are  candidates  for  that  kind  of  felicity. 

We  return  now  to  the  middle  strip  of  the  great  valley  where 
the  engine,  or  rather  boiler  power,  that  operates  the  coast 
wind  in  a  great  part  of  its  velocity,  is  located.  Here  the  heat, 
reverberated  as  in  a  forge,  or  oven  (whence  Cali—fornid) 
becomes,  even  in  the  early  spring,  so  much  raised  that  the 
ground  is  no  longer  able,  by  any  remaining  cold  there  is  in  it, 
to  condense  the  clouds,  and  rain  ceases.  A  little  further  on 
in  the  season,  there  is  not  cooling  influence  enough  left  to  al 
low  even  the  phenomena  of  cloud,  and  for  weeks  together,, 
not  a  cloud  will  be  seen,  unless,  by  chance,  the  skirt  of  one 
may  just  appear  now  and  then,  hanging  over  the  summit  of 
the  western  mountains.  The  sun  rises,  fixing  his  hot  stare  on 
the  world,  and  stares  through  the  day.  Then  he  returns  as  in 
an  orrery,  and  stares  through  another,  in  exactly  the  same  way. 
The  thermometer  will  go  up,  not  seldom,  to  100°  or  even  110°, 
and  judging  by  what  we  know  of  effects  here  in  New  Eng 
land,  we  should  suppose  that  life  would  scarcely  be  support 
able.  And  yet  there  is  much  less  suffering  from  heat  in  this 
valley  than  with  us,  for  the  reason  probably  that  the  nights 
are  uniformly  cool.  The  thermometer  goes  down  regularly 
with  the  sun,  and  one  or  two  blankets  are  wanted  for  the  com 
fort  of  the  night.  This  cooling  of  the  night  is  probably  deter 
mined  by  the  fact  that  the  cool  sea  wind,  sweeping  through  the 


6  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.       [Feb. 

upper  air  of  the  valley,  from  the  coast  mountains  on  one  side, 
over  the  mountains  and  mountain  passes  of  the  Sierra  on  the 
other,  is  not  able  to  get  down  to  the  ground  of  the  valley  during 
the  day,  because  of  the  powerfully  steaming  column  of  heat 
that  rises  from  it ;  but  as  soon  as  the  sun  goes  down,  it  drops 
immediately  to  the  level  of  the  plain,  bathing  it  for  the  night 
with  a  kind  of  perpendicular  sea  breeze,  that  has  lost  for  the 
time  a  great  part  of  its  lateral  motion.  The  consequence  is 
that  no  one  is  greatly  debilitated  by  the  heat.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  the  general  testimony,  that  a  man  can  do  as  much  of  men 
tal  or  bodily  labor  in  this  climate,  as  in  any  other.  And  it  is 
a  good  confirmation  of  this  opinion,  that  horses  will  here  main 
tain  a  wonderful  energy,  traveling  greater  distances,  com 
plaining  far  less  of  heat,  and  sustaining  their  spirit  a  great 
deal  better  than  with  us.  It  is  also  to  be  noted  that  there  is 
no  special  tendency  to  fevers  in  this  hot  region,  except  in 
what  is  called  the  tule  bottom,  a  kind  of  giant  bulrush  region, 
along  the  most  depressed  and  marshiest  portions  of  the  rivers. 
Passing  now  to  the  eastern  strip  or  portion,  the  slope  of  the 
Nevada,  the  heat,  except  in  those  deep  canons  where  the  re 
verberation  makes  it  sometimes  even  insupportable,  is  quali 
fied  in  degree,  according  to  the  altitude.  A  gentle  west  wind, 
heated  in  the  lower  parts  or  foothills  by  the  heat  of  the  valley, 
fans  it  all  day.  At  points  which  are  higher  the  wind  is  cooler. 
Here  also,  on  the  slope  of  the  Nevada,  the  nights  are  always 
cool  in  summer,  so  cool  that  the  late  and  early  frosts  leave  too 
short  a  space  for  the  ordinary  summer  crop  to  mature,  even 
where  the  altitude  is  not  more  than  3,000  or  4,000  feet. 
Meantime,  at  the  top  of  the  Sierra,  where  the  west  wind,  piling 
up  from  below,  breaks  over  into  Utah,  travelers  undertake  to 
say  that,  in  some  of  the  passes  it  blows  with  such,  stress  as 
even  to  polish  the  rocks,  by  the  gravel  and  sand  which  it 
drives  before  it.  The  day  is  cloudless  on  the  slope  of  the 
Sierra,  as  in  the  valley,  but  on  the  top  there  is  now  and  then, 
or  once  in  a  year  or  two,  a  moderate  thunder  shower.  With 
this  exception,  as  referring  to  a  part  uninhabitable,  thunder 
is  scarcely  ever  heard  in  California.  The  principal  thunders  of 
California  are  underground. 


n 

1858.]    California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  7 

We  return  now  to  the  coast-wise  mountain  region,  where  the 
multiplicity  and  confusion  of  climates  is  most  remarkable. 
Their  variety  we  shall  find  depends  on  the  courses  of  the  wind 
currents,  turned  hither  and  thither  by  the  mountains ;  partly 
also  on  the  side  any  given  place  occupies  of  its  valley  or 
mountain;  and  partly  on  the  proximity  of  the  sea.  Sprinkled 
in  among  these  mountains,  and  more  or  less  inclosed  by  them,  are 
valleys,  large  and  small,  of  the  highest  beauty.  But  a  valley 
in  California  means  something  more  than  a  scoop,  or  depres 
sion.  It  means  a  rich  land-lake,  leveled  between  the  moun 
tains,  with  a  sharply  defined,  picturesque  shore,  where  it  meets 
the  sides  and  runs  into  the  indentations  of  the  mountains. 
"What  is  called  the  Bay  of  San  Francisco,  is  a  large  salt  water 
lake  in  the  middle  of  a  much  larger  land-lake,  sometimes 
called  the  San  Jose  valley.  It  extends  south  of  the  city  forty 
miles,  and  northward  among  islands  and  mountains,  about  twen 
ty-five  more,  if  we  include  what  is  called  the  San  Pablo  Bay. 
Three  beautiful  valleys  of  agricultural  country,  the  Petaluma, 
Sonoma,  and  Napa  valleys,  open  into  this  larger  valley  of  the 
Bay  on  the  north  end  of  it,  between  four  mountain  barriers, 
having  each  a  short  navigable  creek  or  inlet.  Still  farther 
north  is  the  Russian  River  valley,  opening  towards  the  sea,  and 
the  Clear  Lake  valley  and  region,  which  is  the  Switzerland  of 
California.  East  of  the  San  Jose  valley,  too,  at  the  foot  of  Dia- 
bolo,  and  up  among  the  mountains,  are  the  large  Amador  and 
San  Ramon  valleys,  also  the  little  gem  of  the  Sunole.  Now  these 
valleys,  which  if  we  except  the  great  valley  of  the  two  rivers, 
comprise  the  plow-land  of  middle  California,  have  each  a  cli 
mate  of  its  own,  and  productions  that  correspond.  We 
have  only  to  observe  further,  that  the  east  side  of  any 
valley  will  commonly  be  much  warmer  than  the  west ;  for 
the  very  paradoxical  reason  that  the  cold  coast-wind  always 
blows  much  harder  on  the  side  or  steep  slope  even,  of  a  moun 
tain,  opposite  or  away  from  the  wind,  than  it  does  on  the 
side  towards  it,  reversing  all  our  notions  of  the  sheltering  ef 
fects  of  mountain  ridges. 

Nothing  will  so  fatally  puzzle  a  stranger  as  the  observing  of 
this  fact ;  for  he  will  doubt  a  long  time,  first,  whether  it  be  a 


8  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.      [Feb. 

fact,  and  then,  what  possible  account  to  make  of  it.  Crossing 
the  Golden  Gate  in  a  small  steamer,  for  example,  to  Sau- 
celito,  whence  the  water  is  brought  for  the  city,  he  will 
look  for  a  quiet  shelter  to  the  little  craft,  apparently  in  danger 
of  foundering,  when  it  comes  under  the  lee  of  that  grand 
mountain  wall  that  almost  overhangs  the  water  on  the  west. 
But  he  is  surprised,  when  he  arrives,  to  find  the  wind  blowing 
straight  down  the  face  of  it,  harder  even  than  elsewhere,  goug 
ing  into  the  water  by  a  visible  depression,  and  actually  raising 
caps  of  white  within  a  single  rod  of  the  shore.  In  San  Fran 
cisco  itself,  he  will  find  the  cold  coast-wind  pouring  down  over 
the  western  barrier  with  uncomfortable  rawness,  when  return 
ing  from  a  ride  at  Point  Lobos,  on  the  very  beach  of  the  sea, 
where  the  air  was  comparatively  soft  and  quiet.  So,  crossing 
the  Sonoma  valley,  he  will  come  out  into  it  from  the  west, 
through  a  cold,  windy  gorge,  to  find  orange  trees  growing  in 
Gen.  Yallejo's  garden,  close  under  the  eastern  valley  wall,  as 
finely  as  in  Cuba.  In  multitudes  of  places  too  on  the  east 
ward  slopes  of  the  mountains,  he  will  notice  that  the  trees, 
which  have,  all,  their  growth  in  the  coast-wind  season,  have 
their  tops  thrown  over,  like  cock's  tails  turned  away  from  the 
wind.  After  he  has  been  sufficiently  perplexed,  and  stumbled 
by  these  facts,  he  will  finally  strike  upon  the  reason,  viz,  that 
this  cold,  trade  wind,  being  once  lifted  or  driven  over  the  sea 
wall  mountains,  and  being  specifically  heavier  than  the  atmos 
phere  into  which  it  is  going,  no  sooner  passes  the  summit  than 
it  pitches  down  as  a  cold  cataract,  with  the  uniformly  accel 
erated  motion  of  falling  bodies.  Then,  as  a  confirmation,  it 
will  occur  to  him  perhaps,  that  he  has  been  seeing  it  demon 
strated  all  summer  long,  from  his  residence  on  the  opposite,  or 
eastern  side  of  the  Bay ;  where,  during  all  the  fore  part  of  the 
day,  and  sometimes  for  the  whole  afternoon,  he  has  noticed  a 
fog  cap,  or  cloud  rolling  over  the  distant  top  of  the  western 
mountain,  and  driving  more  than  half-way  down  the  hither 
side  of  it,  before  it  has  caught  sun  enough  or  heat  enough  to 
become  transparent. 

Having  gotten  the  understanding  of  this  fact,  many  things 
are  made  plain.     For  example,  in  traveling  down  the  western 


1858.]     California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  9 

side  of  the  Bay  from  San  Francisco  to  San  Jose,  and  passing 
directly  under  the  mountain  range  just  referred  to,  he  has 
found  himself  passing  through  as  many  as  four  or  five  distinct 
climates ;  for,  when  abreast  of  some  gap  or  depression  in  the 
western  wall,  the  heavy  wind  has  poured  down  with  a  chill 
ing  coldness,  making  even  an  overcoat  desirable,  though 
it  be  a  clear,  summer  day;  and  then,  when  he  is  abreast 
of  some  high  summit,  which  the  fog-wind  sweeps  by,  and 
therefore  need  not  pass  over,  a  sweltering  and  burning  heat  is 
felt,  in  which  the  lightest  summer  clothing  is  more  than 
enough.  He  has  also  observed  that  directly  opposite  the 
Golden  Gate,  at  Oakland,  and  the  Alameda  point,  where  the 
central  column  of  this  wind  might  be  supposed  to  press  most 
uncomfortably,  the  land  is  covered  with  growths  of  evergreen 
oak,  standing  fresh  and  erect,  while  north  and  south,  on  either 
side,  scarcely  a  tree  is  to  be  seen  for  many  miles ;  a  mystery  that 
is  now  explained  by  the  fact  that  the  wind,  driving  here  square 
against  the  Contra  Costa  or  second  range,  is  piled  and  gets  no 
current,  till  it  slides  off  north  and  south  from  the  point  of 
quiet  here  made;  which  also  is  confirmed  by  the  fact,  that,  in 
riding  down  from  San  Pablo  on  the  north,  he  has  the  wind  in 
his  face,  finds  it  slacken  as  he  approaches  Oakland,  and  pass 
ing  on  still  southward  to  San  Leandro,  has  it  blowing  at  his 
back. 

The  varieties,  and  even  what  appeared  to  be  the  incredible 
anomalies  of  the  California  climates,  begin  at  last  to  be  more 
intelligible.  The  remarkable  contrast,  for  example,  between 
the  climates  of  Benicia  and  Martinez  is  clearly  accounted  for. 
These  two  places,  only  a  mile  and  a  half  apart,  on  opposite 
sides  of  the  straits  of  Carqiiinez,  and  connected  by  a  ferry, 
like  two  points  on  a  river,  are  yet  more  strikingly  contrasted, 
in  their  summer  climates,  than  Charleston  and  Quebec.  Thus 
the  Golden  Gate  column,  wheeling  upon  Oakland,  as  just 
now  described,  sweeps  along  the  face  of  the  Contra  Costa 
chain  in  its  northward  course,  setting  the  few  tree  tops  of  San 
Pablo  aslant,  as  weather  vanes  stuck  fast  by  rust,  and  drives 
its  cold  sea-dust  full  in  the  face  of  Benicia.  Meantime,  at 
Martinez,  close  under  the  end  of  the  mountain  which  has 


10  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.      [Feb. 

turned  the  wind  directly  by,  and  is  itself  cloven  down  here  to 
let  the  straits  of  Carquinez  pass  through,  the  sun  shines  hot 
and  with  an  almost  dazzling  clearness,  and  all  the  characters 
of  the  climate  belong  rather  to  the  great  valley  caldron,  whose 
rim  it  may  be  said  is  here. 

Equally  plain  now  is  the  solution  of  those  apparent  inver 
sions  of  latitude  which,  at  first,  perplex  the  stranger.  In  the 
region  about  Marysville,  for  example,  he  is  overtaken  by  a 
fierce  sweltering  heat  in  April,  and  scarcely  hears,  perhaps,  in 
the  travel  of  a  day,  a  single  bird  sing,  as  if  meaning  it  for  a 
song.  He  descends  by  steamer  to  San  Francisco,  and  thence 
to  San  Jose,  making  a  distance  in  all  of  more  than  two  hun 
dred  miles,  where  he  finds  a  cool,  spring-like  freshness  in  the 
air,  and  hears  the  birds  screaming  with  song  even  more  vehe 
mently  than  in  New  England.  It  is  as  if  he  had  passed  out 
of  a  tropical  into  a  temperate  climate;  when,  in  fact,  he  is 
due  south  of  Marysville  by  the  whole  distance  passed  over. 
But  the  mystery  is  all  removed  by  the  discovery,  that  instead 
of  keeping  in  the  great  valley,  he  broke  out  of  it  through 
the  straits  of  Carquinez  into  the  Bay  valley,  and  the  cold  bath 
atmosphere  of  the  coast-wise  mountains ;  that  now  he  is  in  fact 
within  twenty  miles  of  the  sea,  separated  from  it  only  by  a 
single  wall,  while  at  Marysville,  he  was  more  than  a  hundred 
miles  from  the  sea,  with  four  or  five  high  mountain  tiers  be 
tween. 

Thus  much  for  the  summer  climate  of  California.  The  win 
ter  climate  is  the  trade  wind  reversed.  The  Sierra  is  covered 
now  with  snows  of  incredible  depth  at  the  top,  and  they  ex 
tend  even  down  to  its  foot,  whitening  also  not  seldom,  the 
great  valley,  which  is  much  colder,  at  this  season,  than  the 
coast-mountain  region.  Temperature,  in  short,  is  inverted, 
just  as  the  winds  are.  The  temperature  in  San  Francisco,  for 
example  ranges  generally  between  60°  and  70°,  as  in  the  sum 
mer  between  65°  and  80°  ;  though  the  cold  of  experience  will 
be  scarcely  greater  in  the  winter  than  in  the  summer,  because, 
in  winter,  the  air  is  comparatively  still,  and  in  summer  adds  a 
cooling  effect  by  its  motion.  Probably  there  is  not  a  more 
even  climate  in  the  world.  Now  and  then  the  thermometer 


1858.]     California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.          11 

will  sink  low  enough,  at  night,  to  produce  a  thin  scale  of  ice, 
but  geraniums  will  be  seen  in  full  blossom,  on  the  terraces  of 
the  gardens,  throughout  the  winter. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  this  westward  return  of 
the  trade  winds  brings  the  rainy  season.  All  the  rain  of  the 
year  is  from  it.  It  sometimes  blows  too  with  terrific  violence 
and  pours  even  cascades  of  rain  for  whole  days  together,  pro 
ducing  immense  floods ;  though  generally  the  whole  amount 
of  rain  which  it  brings  is  much  too  small,  for  the  supply  of  the 
springs  and  the  due  moistening  of  the  soil  for  the  year.  It  is 
not  to  be  understood  that  what  is  called  the  rainy  season  is  a 
season  of  continual  rain.  It  is  scarcely  more  rainy,  if  at  all, 
than  our  three  autumnal  months.  And  at  about  the  mid-point 
of  the  season,  or  in  the  month  of  February,  there  is  commonly  a 
suspension,  which  separates  what  may  be  called  the  early  from 
the  latter  rain,  as  in  Palestine.  This  month  of  February  is,  in 
fact,  the  most  lovely  and,  in  many  respects,  the  most  beautiful 
month  of  the  year.  The  green  of  the  landscape  is  then  fresh 
est,  the  air  is  soft,  the  sky  clear,  the  roads  neither  wet  nor 
dusty — all  the  conditions  of  comfort  and  beauty  meet,  to  crown 
it  as  the  June  of  the  Pacific. 

If  now  it  should  appear  that  we  have  spent  too  much  time 
on  the  winds  and  meteorologic  phenomena  of  California,  it  is 
sufficient  to  answer,  that  while  such  an  impression  would  be 
right  if  New  England  were  the  subject,  it  is  not  right  when 
the  subject  is  California.  The  wTinds  of  our  Eastern  shore  are 
a  confused  mixture,  of  which  nothing  can  be  predicated  with 
certainty,  except  the  uncertainty  of  the  weather.  The  Pacific 
winds,  on  the  other  hand,  are  very  nearly  calculable  quanti 
ties  ;  and  by  them  are  determined,  to  a  great  degree,  the  tem 
perature  of  places,  the  rains,  the  seasons,  the  almost  uniform 
salubrity  of  the  country,  (for  with  all  its  varieties  there  is  prob 
ably  no  healthier  region  on  the  globe,)  the  growths  also,  as  re 
spects  both  their  rates  and  kinds,  and  further  still,  the  immense 
commercial  advantages  ;  for  California,  as  we  shall  by  and 
by  see,  is  elected  for  the  great  metropolitan  centre  of  the 
commerce  of  the  Pacific,  quite  as  much  by  its  winds,  as  by  the 
magnificent  harbor,  whose  Gate  is  here  set  open,  to  let  the  ships 


12  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.      [Feb. 

fly  in,  as  doves  to  their  windows,  from  all  the  seas  of  the 
world.  The  gold  of  California,  taken  as  a  determining  cause 
and  physical  endowment  of  its  future,  is  not  once  to  be  com 
pared  with  its  winds.  They  are  more  necessary,  by  a  thousand 
times,  to  the  greatness  of  California  than  the  mines.  If  any 
one  judges,  from  our  description,  that  they  are  too  cold,  or  too 
strong,  or  too  much  laden  with  moisture,  he  will  greatly  mis 
take.  If  they  were  warmer,  softer  and  more  dry  on  the  coast, 
even  by  a  few  degrees,  it  would  greatly  injure  the  country  and 
might  even  be  a  fatal  blight  on  its  prospects.  Indeed,  if  Cali 
fornia  has  any  prospects,  it  is  just  because  the  light  baffling 
winds,  or  rather  no  winds  of  the  coast  below,  are  here  dis 
placed  by  such  blasts  as  have  power  to  drive  across  its  whole 
width  and  fan  it  with  their  cooling  breath.  Otherwise  its  rich 
valleys  and  lowlands  would  be  arid  deserts,  its  shores  and  riv 
ers  reeking  places  of  disease,  and  even  its  mining  region  too 
hot  to  be  worked  or  even  inhabited,  in  the  summer  months. 

Having  gotten  our  advantage  therefore,  in  a  due  understand 
ing  of  the  winds  and  the  climate  of  California,  our  description 
may  now  proceed  more  rapidly.  The  scenery  of  California 
depends  partly  on  the  surfaces  and  partly  on  the  seasons.  It 
differs  from  our  Eastern  shore,  in  the  fact  that  it  is  made  up  of 
concave  or  scooped  surfaces,  flowing  into  convex  summits  or 
rounded  surfaces,  only  to  a  very  limited  extent ;  all  the  valleys 
being  plains,  or  land-lakes,  with  definite  indented  shores,  like 
shores  of  water.  It  differs  also  from  the  western  prairies  and 
the  plains  of  the  south,  where  the  horizon  is  sunk  and  the  sky 
becomes  a  small  inverted  bowl,  in  the  fact  that  every  spot,  even 
in  the  widest  of  the  valleys,  has  a  mountain  wall  and  horizon 
visible  in  the  distance,  which  props  the  sky  and  lifts  the  vault 
of  it,  giving  a  look  of  airiness  and  expansion,  and  connect 
ing  impressions  even  of  grandeur  and  beauty.  Mountain  and 
plain,  plain  and  mountain,  stretching  generally  coastwise  in 
their  figure,  make  up  the  rough  calico  of  the  surface.  Some 
times  the  mountains  are  bare,  or  nearly  so,  showing  a  mottled 
look  in  the  distance,  where  the  sun,  glancing  down  their  sides, 
burnishes  the  points  and  casts  a  shade  on  the  hollows.  Here 


1858.]     California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  13 

the  cattle  on  a  thousand  hills  are  no  figure  ;  for  the  hills  are 
pastures,  covered  many  of  them  with  a  rich  growth  of  grass 
and  wild  oats  even  to  the  top,  and  the  cattle  paths,  beaten  like 
shelve  rows  into  their  steep  sides,  just  save  them  apparently 
from  sliding  off  into  the  abysses,  making  every  rod  of  pasture 
accessible  and  permitting  them  finally  to  emerge,  as  the  tri 
umph  of  their  engineering  instinct,  on  summits  2,000,  or  even 
3,000  feet  high,  where  they  are  seen  from  below,  in  clean  relief 
on  the  sky.  Sometimes  again  the  mountain  sides  are  covered 
with  a  dense  chapparal,  appearing  in  the  distance  just  as  they 
would  if  darkened  by  a  forest  ;  save  that,  now  and  then,  the 
chapparal  is  of  a  most  intense,  transparently  green  color,  show 
ing  a  summit  that  emerges  into  the  sun,  when  surrounded  by 
the  driving  clouds  below,  like  a  huge  pile  of  emerald.  Some 
times  the  distant  summits  are  seen  to  be  covered  with  a  growth 
of  redwoods,  that  stand  posted  there  as  giant  sentinels,  every 
trunk  distinctly  visible,  and  all  together,  200  or  300  feet  high, 
combing  the  sky  in  dark  relief  upon  it,  giving  to  the  horizon 
thus  a  most  peculiar  look  of  spirit  and  majesty.  The  lower  half  of 
the  Sierra  Nevada,  comprising  the  foothills  and  the  whole  mining 
region,  is  covered  extensively  with  a  timber  growth  of  pines, 
cedars  and  other  evergreens.  The  upper  half  is  bald,  ragged 
granite,  the  highest  peaks  of  which  are  covered  a  great  part 
of  the  year  with  snow.  All  the  mountains  differ  from  those 
of  the  east,  in  the  fact  that  they  are  seamed  or  furrowed  from 
the  tops  downward,  every  few  rods,  by  a  ravine  or  water  course. 
These  ravines  are  many  of  them  dry  in  the  summer,  though 
generally,  or  at  least  frequently,  displaying  a  green  line  of 
shrubbery  and  trees  in  their  course,  which  makes  them  very 
conspicuous  from  a  distance ;  especially  when  the  mountains 
are  bare  on  their  general  surface.  These  ravines,  too,  are 
often  cut  miles  deep  into  the  hills,  becoming  immense  chasms, 
canons  or  gorges,  out  of  which  all  the  earth  has  been  swept, 
to  fill  the  rich  valley  bottom  and  make  up  the  land-lake 
deposit  of  the  plain.  All  the  mountains  accordingly  'are 
flanked  by  spurs  with  intervening  gorges,  and  these  again  by 
spurs,  and  these  again  by  the  same ;  so  that,  standing  on  the 
side  of  some  grand  amphitheatre,  the  spectator  may  some- 


14:          California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.       [Feb. 

times  see  that  he  is  on  the  spur  of  a  spur,  even  in  the  fifth 
degree  ;  all  of  which  spurs  are  run  together,  like  pig  iron 
castings  in  a  furnace,  only  with  a  more  disorderly  complica 
tion.  Hence,  too,  the  impossibility  in  California,  as  we  may 
here  remark  in  passing,  that  any  railroad  should  ever  get 
over  a  mountain,  as  with  us,  by  skirting  along  its  sides  till  it 
has  made  the  ascent ;  for  such  a  line  would  be  cut  by  the 
side  canons,  or  gorges,  from  a  hundred  to  a  thousand  ,or  even 
two  thousand  feet  deep,  every  half  mile.  There  is  no  way  but 
to  follow  up  the  bottom  of  some  great  canon,  or  river  gorge,  till 
it  becomes  too  steep,  and  escape  by  a  tunnel ;  or  else  to  find 
some  spur  whose  back  can  be  ascended,  and  keep  it  to  the  top. 

From  these  general  descriptions  of  the  surface  it  will  be  natu 
rally  inferred  that  there  is  a  great  deal,  both  of  beautiful  and  of 
grand  scenery,  in  California.  Few  countries  are  richer  in 
their  varieties,  and  none  more  peculiar  in  all.  Here  sleeps 
in  quiet,  earthly  beauty  the  rich  vale  of  Sonoma,  backed  in 
rough  grandeur  by  the  towering  Diabolo,  a  picture  in  a 
frame.  Here  in  the  deep  chasm  or  angle  that  foots  the  Yo 
Hamite  Falls,  a  river  is  beheld  pitching  off  a  summit  2,400 
feet  high,  and  by  two  leaps  reaching  the  bottom  ;  type,  as  it 
were,  of  heaven's  mercy  pouring  from  the  sky.  Here  on  the 
other  hand,  at  the  Geysers,  in  the  cracking,  cannonading, 
whistling  and  roaring  of  steam,  and  the  spouting  of  hot  mud, 
and  the  brimstone  fumes  of  the  place,  we  look  on  a  field, 
under  which  we  may  well  enough  imagine  the  infernals,  swel 
tering  and  tearing,  as  it  were,  diabolically,  to  break  loose. 
At  the  Big  Trees,  we  enter  a  dell,  quietly  lapped  in  the 
mountains,  where  the  majestic  vegetable  minarets  are 
crowded,  as  in  some  city  of  pilgrimage  ;  there  to  look  up, 
for  the  first  time,  in  silent  awe  of  the  mere  life  principle. 

The  scene  of  the  city  and  bay,  from  the  high  background  of 
the  city,  is  one  that  any  lover  of  nature  might  travel  far  to 
see.  The  same  reversed,  from  the  east  side  of  the  bay,  at 
Clinton,  is  more  remarkable.  In  the  unalterable  green  fore 
ground,  are  the  oaks  of  Oakland  and  the  Alameda ;  here  and 
there  flows  in  a  strip  or  armlet  of  water ;  next  comes  the  Bay, 
in  the  middle,  with  its  picturesque  islands ;  beyond  are  the 


1858.]    California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  15 

city,  and  the  open  Gate  showing  the  Farralone  Islands  far  off 
at  sea ;  right  and  left,  each  side  of  the  Gate,  the  grand  sea-wall 
of  mountains  stretches  north  and  south,  for  a  background,  at 
least  fifty  miles — it  is  not  the  bay  of  Naples,  the  dreamy  soft 
ness  and  quiet  luxury  are  not  here,  but  with  more  severity, 
the  scene  unites  a  higher  spirit  and  a  beauty  as  much  more 
impressive  and  brilliant.  The  Gate  itself,  cleaving  down  the 
mountains,  to  let  the  commerce  of  the  Great  Ocean  of  the 
world  pass  in,  has  a  look  of  destiny  in  it  strong  enough  to  be 
sublime. 

There  is  a  little  valley  owned  by  a  wealthy  and  respect 
able  Spanish  Californian,  Mr.  Sufiole,  which  is  commonly 
called  by  his  name,  and  is  occupied  as  a  pasture  ground  or  ranch 
for  his  herds.  It  lies  over  among  the  Contra  Costa,  or  second 
range  of  mountains  east  of  Mission  San  Jose,  and  is  entered  by 
a  pass  some  four  hundred  feet  above  the  valley  bottom,  which 
comprises  about  a  thousand  acres.  Through  this  valley 
bottom  runs  a  clear,  rapid  stream,  which,  in  the  spring, 
would  be  called  a  river,  and  which,  wheeling  round  to  the 
northwest,  cuts  the  mountain  to  its  base,  dashing  through  one 
of  the  wildest  gorges  that  can  be  conceived,  1,500  feet  deep, 
and  hurrying  off  into1  the  Bay.  On  the  north  rises  a  huge 
bare  summit  2,000  feet  high.  On  the  southwest  the  Mission 
Peak,  2,500  feet  high.  On  the  southeast,  across  the  narrow 
wooded-gorge,  through  wrhich  the  river  breaks  into  the  valley, 
other  fantastic  peaks  3,000  feet  high.  On  the  east,  the  enclo 
sure  is  made  by  a  low,  steep  range  of  naked  hills  showing 
others,  higher  and  still  higher,  behind  them.  A  stranger,  fresh 
arrived  in  May,  at  the  Mission,  takes  his  horse,  for  example, 
the  next  morning,  and  finding  a  road  that  turns  into  the 
narrow  gorge,  or  opening  of  the  hills  near  by,  goes  in  to  ex 
plore  a  little  and  find  whither  it  leads.  The  steep,  smooth 
faced  hills,  or  rather  mountains,  pile  in  with  rounding 
fronts  on  either  side,  just  leaving  a  passage  between,  and 
they  are  so  lighted  up  by  the  sun  brushing  down  their  trans 
lucent  surfaces  of  green,  and  tuned  to  such  wild  harmony 
by  their  many-colored  flowers,  that  sight  overflows,  and  he 
begins  unwittingly  to  listen  ;  as  if  there  must  be  something 


16  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.     [Feb. 

audible,  some  hymn  or  note  of  Memnon  in  the  scene.  Pass 
ing  a  low  summit,  the  beautiful  valley  opens  to  view,  and 
such  a  combination  of  colors  no  eastern  man  or  European 
has  ever  seen  or  conceived.  The  green  is  not  what  we  call 
a  grass  green.  Neither  is  it  the  pale  bluish  green  of  England, 
but  a  soft  yellow  green,  covering  the  whole  landscape,  the 
steeps  even  to  their  summits,  all  the  roundings  and  hollows, 
as  well  as  the  rich  floor  of  the  valley  bottom,  like  an  im 
mense  carpet  of  plush  spread  over  the  scene  ;  which  carpet 
is  so  matted  with  flowers  in  all  the  highest  colors,  sprinkled 
sometimes  in  groups,  that  we  call  it  by  this  name  without 
any  effort  of  fancy — we  can  think  of  nothing  else.  No 
painter,  practiced  in  our  common  styles  of  scenery,  could 
manage  at  all  such  a  picture,  without  much  study,  assisted 
probably  by  many  failures. 

Descending  next  into  the  valley,  he  finishes  out  the 
picturesque  of  the  morning,  in  looking  on  a  scene  quite 
as  new  and  peculiar  as  the  scenery.  In  the  extreme  south 
ern  angle  of  the  plain,  just  where  the  river  issues  from 
the  gorge  of  the  mountains,  he  observes  a  cloud  of  dust 
rising,  and  horsemen  rushing  wildly  through  it  in  all  di 
rections.  Something  brisk  is  evidently  going  on  here,  and 
he  must  needs  find  what  it  is.  Approaching  the  spot  he 
discovers  an  immense  herd  of  cattle  brought  together  from 
the  hills,  which  the  owners  and  their  herdsmen  are  either 
sorting  by  their  marks,  or  which  else  they  are  sorting  out,  in 
sale  of  a  part,  for  the  market — they  are  Spanish,  native  Cali- 
fornians  all,  and  do  not  answer  English  questions.  This  at 
least  is  plain,  that  they  are  gathering  out  of  the  great  herd  of 
a  thousand  or  more,  to  make  up  another  and  separate  herd 
a  short  distance  off,  and  the  lasso  practice  is  the  power. 
Hiding  into  the  herd  and  through  it,  they  chase  out  one, 
turning  him  towards  the  new  herd.  But  he  runs  by,  and 
back  into  the  herd,  or  he  strikes  out  into  the  plain,  in  some 
other  direction.  But  the  pursuer  is  after  him.  Round  and 
round  swings  the  fatal  loop  or  noose  above  his  head  as  he 
goes,  till  he  gets  within  reach,  at  three  or  four  rods  distance, 
when  he  lets  it  fly,  and  it  drops  with  a  kind  of  astronomic 


1858.]     California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  17 

certainty  round  the  poor  animal's  horns.  Feeling  it  fast 
upon  him,  the  animal  now  turns  upon  his  persecutor,  and  it  is 
convenient  for  him  also  to  fly  in  his  turn — only  keeping  the 
cord  still  fast  to  the  horn  of  his  saddle.  Another  horseman 
follows  immediately,  and  another  lasso  drops  and  is  drawn 
fast.  Now  the  animal,  in  a  line  between  the  two  pur 
suers,  strikes  off,  throwing  his  whole  momentum,  if  he  can, 
upon  the  straight  line,  at  right  angles  to  it,  which  gives 
him  advantage  enough  to  unhorse  both  of  them,  if  they  let 
him  come  to  the  blow.  All  three,  therefore,  now  are  in  a 
race  together,  and  as  soon  as  this  is  seen,  a  third  horseman  is 
in  pursuit,  and  throwing  his  lasso,  he  picks  up  a  hind  leg  of 
the  ox  as  he  runs,  doing  it  as  easily  as  a  knitter  might 
take  up  a  fallen  stitch.  This  clone,  while  the  two  others 
are  spreading  right  and  left,  he  darts  off  sideways  in  a  prick 
of  the  spur,  and  jerks  the  refractory  beast  flat  upon  the 
ground;  where  he  lies  bellowing  in  fright  and  despair,  held 
fast  by  three  cords,  at  three  angles,  as  little  able  to  escape  as  a 
fly  in  a  spider's  web.  Next  a  huge,  fiery  bull  is  seen  rushing 
out  of  the  herd,  pursued  by  a  small,  sharp  looking  herdsman, 
who  says,  by  a  certain  look  of  his  eye,  that  he  will  show  the 
green  stranger  a  trick.  Bolting  into  the  plain,  the  mettle 
some,  tall  animal,  leads  off  in  a  race  which  puts  the  horse 
to  his  best  speed.  But  as  the  pursuer  comes  up  with  him,  he 
seizes  the  tail  of  the  renegade,  streaming  level  behind  him, 
winds  it  by  a  quick  turn  round  the  horn  of  his  saddle,  and 
darting  off  suddenly  by  a  spring,  as  if  it  were  done  by  some 
concussion  of  gunpowder,  he  jerks  the  bull  flat  down  and  rolls 
him  clean  over !  Whereupon  there  is  a  shout  from  all — but  the 
bull ;  who  gets  up,  as  it  were,  in  an  effort  of  self-recollection, 
and  walks  off  meekly  where  they  show  him  the  way. 

We  only  add,  as  regards  the  scenery  in  California,  that  ev 
erything  is  here  inverted  which  we  commonly  assume  in  re 
spect  to  the  effects  of  culture.  Culture  improves  nothing. 
California  was  finished  as  a  world  of  beauty,  before  civilization 
appeared.  The  magnificent  valleys  opened  wide  and  clean. 
The  scattered  oaks  stood  in  majesty,  here  and  there,  and  took 
away  the  nakedness.  Civilization  comes,  cuts  down  the  oaks 
for  firewood,  fences  off  the  plains  into  squares,^  covers  them 


18  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.     [Feb. 

with  grain  or  stubble,  scatters  wild  mustard  over  them,  it  may 
be,  and  converts  them  into  a  weedy  looking  desolation.     The 
only  attractive  looking  surface  ever  to  be  seen  in  California,  is 
the  native  original  surface  ;  for  there  is  never  to  be  a  lawn,  or 
a  neat  grassy  slope,  as  with  us,  because  there  is  no  proper  turf. 
Shrubbery  itself  can  never  be  made  ornamental  in  California, 
.  except  where  there  is  irrigation  to  maintain  it.     Where  there 
is  irrigation,  a  garden  or  house  lot  may  be   covered  in  with 
trees  and  set  off  with  flowers,  so  as  to  be  really  fresh  in  beauty 
at  all  times,  but  this  is  not  the  kind  of  beauty  that  makes  a 
landscape.     In  the  mining  country,  the  natural  beauty  of  the 
scenery  is  defaced  by  another  process.     Here  a  thin  but  stately 
growth  of  evergreens  is  sprinkled  over  the  generally  graceful 
slopes  and  roundings  of  the  hills,  and  a  pure  crystal  stream 
leaps  along  down  the  trough  of  the  hills,  over  cliffs  of  rock  and 
pebbly  beds.     But  the  miner  comes.     Finding  gold  that  will 
"  pay  "  in  the  soil,  he  rents  a  head  of  water  from  the  Ditch 
Company,  whose  ditch,  bringing  on  the  water  from  some  level 
far  up  in  the  Sierra,  flows  it  along  from  hill  top  down  to  hill 
top,  and  across  from  one  hill  to  another,  leaping  hollows  and 
ravines  on  wooden  tressle  work,  sometimes  even  two  hundred 
feet  high,  till  it  reaches  a  point  abreast  of  his  placer,  and  di 
rectly  above  it.     Bringing  it  down  the  hill  in  an  immense  cot 
ton  hose,   with  a  nozzle  pipe  like  that  of  a  fire  engine,  he 
plays  it  into  the  side  of  the  hill,  with  a  pressure  of  perhaps 
one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  fall ;  tears  down  the  hill,  acre  by 
acre,  and  floats  it  off,  rolling  the  loose  stones  with  it  down  his 
wooden  trunk  or  sluice,  in  which  the  gold  is  arrested,  and  so 
continues,  till  he  has  carried  off  a  large  section  of  the  hill  side, 
even  a  hundred  feet  deep.     His  neighbors  are  doing  the  same 
thing  right  and  left.     Pits  also  are  sunk  downward,  and  tun 
nels  bored  in  level  into  the  sides  of  the  hills,  and  the  earth 
from   so    many  burrows,  is    piled   at     their    mouths.      The 
trees  are  cut  down  for  timber  and  fire  wood.     The  stream  of 
the  valley  runs  thick  with  creamy  richness,  and  the  cliffs  and 
pebbly  beds  are  covered  fifty  feet  deep  with  stones  and  mud- 
washings.     The  result  is  a  most  horrid  desolation,  of  which 
every  line  of  the  natural  beauty  is  gone  forever.     If  some 


1858.]      California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  19 

camp  of  demons  had  been  pitched  here  for  a  year,  tearing  the 
earth  by  their  fury,  and  con  verting  it  to  the  model  of  their 
own  bad  thought,  they  could  hardly  make  it  look  worse.  The 
whole  mining  region  is  finally  to  become  a  desolation  in  just 
this  manner.  There  is  no  possibility  of  a  process  more  delicate 
for  extracting  the  gold.  Indeed  there  seems  to  be  a  kind  of 
prior  necessity,  which  nature  must  needs  recognize,  that  gold 
and  desolation  go  together.  What  we  see  then,  at  the  mines, 
only  represents  too  faithfully  what  holds  good  historically  in 
the  moral  desolations  of  plunder,  fraud,  and  avarice,  instigated 
by  this  treasure  of  the  mountains.  The  only  part  of  Califor 
nia,  in  short,  that  will  not  be  damaged  in  its  scenery  by  the 
arrival  of  culture,  is  the  broken  country  of  the  coast  region, 
or  the  region  of  natural  pasturage ;  except  that  possibly  the 
Artesian  wells  may  be  carried  so  far  as  to  irrigate  a  considera 
ble  part  of  the  valley  surfaces.  Thus,  while  there  is  almost  no 
stream  running  through  a  valley  bottom  in  the  summer,  be 
cause  every  issue  from  the  mountains  sinks  immediately  into 
the  gravel  beds  of  the  plains,  and  runs  under,  it  may  turn  out 
generally,  in  the  narrow  valleys,  as  in  that  of  San  Jose,  that 
Artesian  wells,  sunk  two  hundred  or  three  hundred  feet,  will 
bring  it  up,  spouting  into  liberty  on  the  surface.  Two  or  three 
of  the  wells  in  this  town  throw  a  column  nine  inches  in  diam 
eter,  ten  or  fifteen  feet  high,  discharging  water  enough  to  turn 
a  mill  and  of  course  to  irrigate  a  large  surface. 

It  will  doubtless  occur  to  many,  that  the  dry  season  of  the 
year,  which  is  the  summer,  must  be  a  season  of  utter  desola 
tion  as  regards  the  scenery.  "What  can  be  more  desolate  than 
a  universal  dry  death?  And  if  the  water-runs,  or  ravines  are 
green,  if  the  chapparal  on  some  of  the  mountains,  and  occa 
sionally  trees  in  the  plains,  that  have  the  faculty  to  bore  deep 
for  their  water,  show  a  semblance  of  life,  if  the  gardens  which 
are  irrigated  show  a  patch  of  luxuriancy  here  and  there,  like 
an  oasis  in  the  yellow  desert,  what  after  all  is  the  landscape 
but  a  desert?  Suppose  then  it  were  to  be  covered  with  snows 
two  or  three  feet  deep,  and  every  solitary  thing  stripped  of  its 
green,  would  the  scenery  be  less  desolate?  But  this  is  our 
winter.  The  wintry,  or  suspension  time  of  California  is  in  the 


20  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.     [Feb. 

summer,  and  the  winter  months  of  the  almanac  are  dressed 
in  the  richest,  freshest  green.  And  yet  the  Californians  all 
speak  of  beautiful  scenery  in  the  summer,  and  any  one  who 
has  been  there  a  few  months  begins  to  sympathize  with  them. 
Trees  and  chapparal  are  stronger  marks  on  the  landscape  than 
with  us,  green  spots,  such  as  watered  fields  and  gardens, 
have  a  fascinating  freshness.  And  even  the  dry  surfaces,  in 
certain  lights,  make  a  picture,  by  aid  of  the  shadows  on  the 
hollow  surfaces,  and  the  occasional  green  of  trees  and  chap 
paral  and  gardens,  that  is  really  beautiful.  The  little  valley 
just  described,  for  example,  puts  off  its  green  and  takes  on  a 
dress  of  drab,  velvety  and  soft  in  the  glancing  strokes  of  the 
light,  and  becomes  for  all  the  world  a  neat  Quaker  bonnet; 
only  that  the  deep  blue  green  of  the  gorges,  and  the  lively 
green  ribands  that  dangle  down  the  water  courses  are  a  little 
too  dressy  and  fantastic,  and  suggest  a  case  of  sumptuary  dis 
cipline.  The  most  that  can  be  said  of  this  Pacific  hyberriation 
time  is,  that  while  our  winter  is  absolute,  unconquerable  deso 
lation,  the  Californian  can  go  into  his  garden,  turn  on  the 
water,  make  an  outdoor  green-house  of  it,  filled  wTith  all 
richest  fruits  and  singing  birds,  and  there  wait  patiently  till 
the  months  of  green  return. 

The  growths  of  California  are  as  peculiar  and  various  as  their 
climate.  To  make  this  subject  intelligible,  let  it  be  understood 
that  where  there  is  no  irrigation,  natural  or  artificial,  nothing 
grows  perennially  in  California,  except  trees  that  have  a  tap 
root,  and  shrubs  and  grasses  that  have  some  peculiar  kind  of 
root  that  enables  them  to  get  sufficient  moisture,  where  only  a 
little  is  given.  There  is  a  coarse,  perennial  grass,  for  example, 
that  is  found,  when  dug,  to  grow  out  of  perpendicular  rootlets 
eight  or  ten  inches  long,  which  themselves  grow  out  of  large 
horizontal  roots,  that  serve  as  water  cisterns  or  sponges  for  the 
uses  overhead.  None  of  the  common  upland,  or  hay  grasses, 
live  through  the  summer,  and  therefore  none  make  what  can 
be  called  a  turf.  The  grasses  of  every  season  are  started  in 
November,  from  the  ripe  seeds  dropped  into  the  chinks  of  the 
ground,  in  the  dry  season  previous.  It  results  accordingly, 


1858.]     California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  21 

that  no  crop  can  be  raised  in  California,  which  does  not  ripen 
before  the  dry  season  commences,  or  by  about  the  first  of 
June.  The  only  exceptions  possible  to  this  are  made  by  irri 
gation,  either  where  water  is  artificially  supplied,  or  where, 
as  will  sometimes  be  the  case,  there  is  a  supply  from  stores,  or 
filterings  underneath.  It  is  only  under  these  conditions  that  a 
crop  of  Indian  corn,  or  potatoes,  can  be  raised.  Though  an 
early  crop  of  potatoes,  ripening  in  June  or  in  July,  can  be 
raised  anywhere  ;  and  where  the  ground  is  sufficiently  moist 
ened  from  below,  two  crops  a  year  are  frequently  grown  upon 
the  same  soil.  Potatoes  of  the  late  crop  are  grown  too  in 
some  places  near  the  coast,  where  they  get  moisture  enough 
from  the  atmosphere  and  the  fog,  to  answer  their  purpose.  A 
summer  garden  will  commonly  make  but  a  poor  figure,  unless 
it  is  recruited  by  supplies  of  water  not  contained  in  the 
natural  soil  of  the  place.  The  dry  season  is,  in  fact,  the 
wintering  season  of  vegetation,  though  it  is  the  summer. 
Whatever  lives,  hybernates,  rests.  The  strawberry,  for  exam 
ple,  ripens  its  fruit  in  April,  has  its  growth,  ceases,  begins  to 
look  rusty,  and  passes  into  the  state  of  suspension,  finally  to 
die.  Let  on  now  a  flow  of  water,  and  it  wakes,  blossoms 
again,  bears  another  crop,  and  passes  into  a  second  suspension, 
and  then  is  ready  to  be  wakened  and  bear  a  third  crop.  And 
so  by  alternating  in  times  with  different  beds,  a  succession  is 
kept  up,  and  a  bountiful  supply  is  obtained  from  April  to  No 
vember. 

The  principal  growths,  or  products  of  California, 'are  accord 
ingly  the  fruits  and  the  cereals.  Most  of  the  fruits  really 
want  irrigation,  though  there  are  many  tracts  of  soil  in  which 
they  will  flourish  without,  and  will  not  ripen  prematurely. 
The  fruits  are  grapes,  figs,  olives,  pomegranates,  almonds, 
plums,  apricots,  pears,  peaches  and  apples.  Finer  grapes  are 
grown  nowhere  in  the  world.  The  apples  are  large  and  fair, 
and  wonderfully  precocious  in  bearing,  but  there  is  reason  to 
suspect,  from  experiments  made  in  the  old  mission  gardens, 
that  they  may  be  short  lived.  Peaches,  plums,  and  pears  bear 
only  too  profusely.  Indeed,  there  is  a  wondrous  tendency  to 
fructification  in  every  kind  of  growth,  animal  and  vegetable. 


22  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.      [Feb. 

As  yet,  the  fruits  sell  at  enormous  prices,  because  of  the  short 
ness  of  supply.  In  a  very  few  years  they  will  be  plenty  and 
cheap.  And  even  now  there  is  no  city  on  the  earth,  where  the 
fruit  shops  make  as  fine  a  show  as  in  San  Francisco.  Consid 
ering  the  size,  the  fairness,  the  varieties,  and  all  that  goes  to 
make  a  show  of  richness  and  profusion,  there  is  probably 
nothing  in  the  world,  to  match  the  displays  of  fruit  in  this  new 
city  of  the  Pacific. 

But  the  great  agricultural  crops  of  California  are  the  cereals, 
wheat,  and  barley,  and  oats.  These  are  sown  at  any  time, 
when  it  is  both  wet  enough  and  dry  enough  to  plow,  between 
November  and  March ;  harvested  any  time  between  the  rip 
ening  of  June  and  the  rain-falls  of  November;  for  they  will 
stand  uninjured,  or  lie,  as  left  by  the  reaper,  uninjured  and 
without  shelling,  all  that  time ;  so  that  a  small  force  suffices 
both  to  raise  and  to  harvest  a  large  crop.  And  the  yield  is  from 
twenty  to  sixty  bushels  of  wheat  to  the  acre,  subject  to  no 
contingencies  but  wet  and  premature  drought,  which  latter 
only  shortens  the  crop.  Even  one  hundred  and  forty  bushels 
of  barley  have  been  harvested  on  a  single  acre.  Oats  are  said 
to  degenerate  in  the  seeding,  but  we  have  seen  the  stalk  even 
twelve  feet  high.  These  crops,  again,  will  sow  themselves 
for  a  second  crop  the  next  year,  and  that  will  yield  more  than 
any  crop  sown  in  the  "Western  or  Atlantic  states.  Sixty  or 
eighty  bushels  have  been  gathered  for  the  volunteer  crop  of 
barley.  This,  in  fact,  is  one  of  the  evils  to  be  encountered  by 
California  agriculture,  that  every  crop  perpetuates  itself  as  a 
weed ;  so  that  no  good  wheat  crop,  for  example,  can  be  raised 
on  a  field  once  sown  with  barley,  till  the  barley  is  extermina 
ted;  and  one  barley-sowing  will  sometimes  yield  three  or  four 
volunteer  crops  that  are  worth  harvesting.  Even  potatoes 
will  perpetuate  themselves  in  the  same  way.  Change  of  crops, 
therefore,  is  difficult.  When  the  problem  accordingly  is 
raised,  how  or  by  what  process  exhausted  soils  are  to  be  re 
stored  in  California,  it  is  not  easy  now  to  answer;  but  some 
process  will  be  doubtless  discovered  in  clue  time.  In  many 
cases  this  exhaustion  will  come  to  pass  slowly ;  for  the  good 
soil  is  not  unfrequently  two,  and  three,  and  sometimes  eight 


1858.]     California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.          23 

feet  deep.  A  piece  of  ground  sown  regularly  with  wheat 
for  sixteen  years,  lias  been  known  to  yield  forty  bushels  and 
more  to  the  acre.  A  single  deep  plowing,  probably  enough, 
would  make  it  good  for  another  sixteen  years. 

As  regards  the  enormous  growths  of  California,  it  should  be 
understood  that  they  are  not  ordinary.  The  ordinary  fruits, 
for  example,  are  not  larger  than  ours,  and  where  the  trees  are 
overloaded  are  commonly  small.  The  extraordinary  growths 
appear  to  be  easily  accounted  for.  First,  there  is  a  soil  too 
deep  and  rich  for  any  kind  of  growth  to  measure  it.  Next, 
there  is  either  a  natural  under-supply  of  water,  or  an  artificial 
irrigation.  Next,  the  settings  of  fruit  are  limited.  And  then, 
as  no  time  is  lost  in  cloudings  and  rain,  and  the  sun  drives  on 
his  w^ork  unimpeded,  month  by  month,  the  growth  is  pushed 
to  its  utmost  limit.  So  a  pear  will  occasionally  be  produced 
weighing  three  and  a  half  pounds,  or  an  apple-tree,  or  a 
cherry,  will  grow  a  stem  ten  or  twelve  feet  high  in  a  season. 
The  mammoth  turnips,  onions,  beets  and  cabbages,  depend  on 
a  like  concurrence.  But  these  are  freaks,  or  extravagances  of 
nature — only  they  are  such  as  can  be  equaled  nowhere  else. 
The  Big  Trees  depend,  in  part,  on  these  same  contingencies, 
and  partly  on  the  remarkable  longevity  of  their  species.  A 
tree  that  is  watered  without  rain,  having  a  deep  vegetable  mold 
in  which  to  stand,  and  not  so  much  as  one  hour's  umbrella  of 
cloud,  to  fence  off  the  sun,  for  the  whole  warm  season,  and  a 
capacity  to  live  withal  for  two  thousand  years  or  more,  may  as 
well  grow  three  hundred  and  fifty  or  four  hundred  feet  high 
and  tw^enty-five  feet  in  diameter,  and  show  the  very  centre- 
point  or  pith  still  sound,  at  the  age  of  thirteen  hundred  years, 
as  to  make  any  smaller  figure  with  conditions  proportionally 
restricted. 

The  agricultural  capacities  of  California,  it  will  be  seen,  are 
very  great  as  regards  the  rate  and  facility  of  production.  The 
only  drawback  now  experienced  is  in  the  want  of  a  reliable 
and  sufficient  market.  The  mines  and  the  cities  are  now  the 
principal  consumers.  The  result  is,  that  if  the  product  is  a 
little  short,  the  prices  rise  extravagantly,  because  there  is  no 
other  supply.  On  the  other  hand,  if  it  is  a  little  over  the 


24:  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.      [Feb. 

demand,  the  prices  fall  as  extravagantly.  And  then,  as  the 
producers  are  flying  always  towards  that  which  yields  the  best 
reward,  every  kind  of  product  is  likely  to  be  overgrown  in  its 
turn,  and  so  the  prices  become  even  more  capricious,  for  the 
reason  that  they  are  capricious.  When  markets  are  opened  by 
an  outside  commerce,  as  they  will  be,  and  when  all  the 
whaling  ships  are  fitted  and  sent  out  from  San  Francisco  and 
Puget  Sound,  the  mischief  will  be  repaired.  At  present, 
owing  to  this  caprice  of  the  market,  agriculture  is  scarcely 
less  of  a  venture,  than  mining. 

Accordingly  the  attention  of  land  owners  is  now  being 
turned,  more  than  before,  to  pasturage.  The  old  Spanish 
breed  of  cattle  is  giving  way  to  the  new  cultivated  breeds 
most  valued  here,  and  large  ranges  of  land  are  taken  up  in  the 
hill  regions,  where  immense  herds  of  from  one  to  ten  thousand 
head  of  cattle  are  collected,  which  are  yielding  a  rich  revenue 
to  their  owners.  These  herds  are  kept  sometimes  wholly 
without  fodder,  and  generally  with  very  little.  They  fatten 
most  in  the  summer,  when  the  feed  is  dry,  and  only  suffer, 
when  the  falling  rains  have  rotted  the  old  growth,  and  have 
not  yet  sufficiently  started  the  new.  Hence  it  is  common  to 
burn  over  a  considerable  portion  of  the  ranges,  just  before  the 
rains,  that  the  cattle  may  be  able  to  get  access  to  the  first 
sprouting  of  the  seeds,  at  the  earliest  moment  possible.  The 
air,  accordingly,  is  filled  with  smoke  for  many  days ;  the 
mountains  are  flaming  round  the  horizon  day  and  night,  as  if 
the  last  day  had  come,  and  horsemen  are  rushing  hither  and 
thither  to  fight  off  the  fires  from  the  wheat  fields  and  the 

O 

pastures  of  the  plains.  And  then  the  result  is,  that  the  yel 
low,  yellow,  ever  yellow  hills  that  were,  as  soon  as  a  good  rain 
has  sprouted  the  seeds,  come  forth — green  out  of  black — and 
the  body  of  the  high  burnt  hill  or  mountain,  is  turned  to  a 
beryl,  without  so  much  as  a  twig,  or  a  weed-stalk,  to  mar  the 
color.  This  great  interest  of  pasturage  promises  even  to 
exceed  the  plowing  interest  in  importance.  The  home  market 
for  it  is  equally  reliable,  and  the  salted  and  dried  meats,  the 
hides,  the  tallow,  and  wool,  are  products  that  can  take  the 
world  for  their  market. 


1858.]      California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.          25 

The  culture  of  the  grape,  too,  promises  much.  Whether  it 
can  be  successfully  prosecuted  without  irrigation  is  doubtful, 
though  it  is  well  known  that  old,  deep  rooted  vines  will  bear  a 
crop  without.  It  is  commonly  believed  that  California  is 
hereafter  to  become  the  great  wine  growing  country  of  the 
Pacific. 

With  so  many  advantages,  it  is  impossible  that  California 
should  not  become  one  of  the  richest  countries  in  the  world,  on 
the  score  of  its  mere  land  interest  and  the  products  yielded  by 
its  soil.  It  has  garnered  up  also,  in  the  soil  itself,  treasures 
that  no  other  country  can  boast.  It  will  take  a  thousand  years 
to  wash  over  all  the  pay  dirt  of  the  gold  mines.  It  is  compu 
ted  also  to  have,  in  a  single  quartz  lead,  more  gold,  five  times 
over,  than  is  now  owned  by  the  whole  world;  and  other  veins 
are  being  opened,  almost  every  month,  which  are  ready  to 
yield  great  revenues  of  profit,  as  soon  as  they  are  worked. 
The  quartz  mills,  once  supposed  to  be  a  failure,  are  now  so 
perfected  as  to  yield  immense  profits,  almost  without  excep 
tion.  The  waters  too  of  the  mountain  are  a  great  wealth,  and 
the  thirty  or  forty  millions  already  invested  in  the  ditches, 
ought  to  be  yielding  a  great  revenue,  as  much  of  it  already 
is.  Besides,  there  are  mines  of  quicksilver,  such  as  make  all 
other  mines  in  the  world  comparatively  worthless,  deposits  of 
borax,  rocks  of  alum,  hills  of  sulphur,  quarries  of  marble, 
beds  of  coal  and  of  iron — in  short,  there  was  never  a  country 
so  underlaid  with  treasure  of  every  kind. 

The  commercial  advantages  are  not  yet  developed,  and  will 
not  be,  till  the  Pacific  shores  are  lined  with  new  nations,  and 
the  untold  riches  of  their  natural  resources  are  brought  into 
the  circulations  of  trade.  Even  if  a  railroad  were  built  across 
the  continent,  it  is  not  likely  that  any  very  great  amount  of 
merchandise,  or  any  but  the  most  precious  forms  of  merchan 
dise,  would  pass  that  way.  Probably  there  is  a  greater  amount 
of  expectation  vested  in  such  an  improvement,  than  the  actual 
experiment  will  justify.  The  distance  is  too  great,  the  grades 
too  heavy,  (as  heretofore  reported,)  the  running  expenses  too 
enormous,  to  allow  the  freight  of  any  common  articles  of  trade. 


26         California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.      [Feb. 

And  yet  California  is  on  the  great  water  highway  of  the  Pa 
cific,  and  her  Gate  the  certain  goal  of  its  travel.  For  it  is  re 
markable  that  this  Golden  Gate  is  at  the  southmost  limb  of  the 
variable  trade  winds,  and  that  these,  blowing  in,  a  little  from 
the  south  of  west,  and  out,  from  a  little  north  of  east,  will 
drive  a  ship  directly  out  to  China,  or  directly  in  from  China — 
whichever  way  they  blow — laying  a  straight  course  on  one  of 
the  great  circles  of  the  earth ;  while,  immediately  south  of  the 
Gate,  the  winds  begin  to  change  character,  and  are  much  less 
available  for  sailing  purposes,  and  continue  to  be  so,  even  down 
as  far  in  south  latitude  as  to  Valparaiso.  Thus  to  sail  a  ship 
up  the  western  coast  of  the  continent,  from  Panama  to  San 
Francisco,  would  probably  require  a  whole  summer,  and  even 
that  might  not  suffice  for  the  passage.  No  ship  can  ever  ap 
proach  that  shore  by  sail  without  falling  into  a  contest  with 
currents,  which  the  light  baffling  winds  and  Doldrums  make 
it  difficult  to  maintain  with  success.  To  get  in  is  difficult,  to 
get  away  more  difficult.  And  hence  perhaps  it  is,  at  least  in 
part,  that  one  may  pass  down  that  whole  stretch  of  coast,  a 
distance  of  3000  miles,  in  one  of  the  California  steamers, 
and  actually  not  see,  on  the  passage,  so  much  as  a  rag 
of  sail  of  any  description.  On  the  other  hand,  at  Puget 
Sound,  the  only  available  harbor  ground  on  the  north, 
the  winds  blow  off  the  coast  with  such  violence,  that  vessels 
after  pounding  there  for  weeks  together,  till  the  crews  were 
quite  worn  out,  have  returned  to  San  Francisco  to  refit  for 
a  new  trial.  Besides  in  the  winter  trades,  which  are  from 
the  northeast,  a  vessel  sailing  from  China  for  the  Sound  will 
have  the  whole  distance  to  make,  with  a  wind  directly  against 
her ;  while  she  might  lay  her  course  for  San  Francisco  and 
straight  in,  without  once  shifting  her  sail. 

Nature,  it  will  thus  be  seen,  has  set  her  seal  on  San  Fran 
cisco,  appointing  it  to  be  the  great  commercial  centre  of  that 
coast  and  ocean.  Here  rests  the  future  axis  of  motion.  In 
deed  it  is  hardly  extravagant  to  imagine  that,  in  some  distant 
age,  when  the  enterprise  and  the  resources  of  that  Ocean,  with 
its  islands  and  coasts,  are  fully  developed,  the  Atlantic  com 
merce  will  be  a  thing  by  the  way,  an  affair  of  the  outskirts. 


1858.]     California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.          27 

All  such  expectations,  it  is  obvious,  must  depend,  in  a  great 
degree,  on  the  political  and  moral  condition  of  California.  And 
here  one  very  great  danger  happily  is  already  past ;  viz,  the  in 
troduction  of  human  slavery.  There  is  no  state  in  the  Union 
where  slavery  could  he  worked  to  greater  advantage  than  in  Cal 
ifornia.  Connected  with  this  fact,  we  have  also  the  concomitant 
fact,  that  the  office-holders  and  political  operators  of  the  state 
have  very  generally  "been  men  from  the  South.  To  understand, 
therefore,  even  after  the  fact,  how  it  is  that  slavery  is  excluded, 
is  what  any  stranger  will  accomplish  with  the  greatest  difficulty. 
Xo  inquiries  he  can  make  will  quite  solve  the  riddle.  Some 
have  spoken  of  the  known  weight  of  the  laboring  and  money 
making  classes,  being  always  opposed  to  slavery,  and  silently 
constraining  the  politicians,  who  were  not,  to  respect  their  posi 
tion.  Some  have  ascribed  much  to  the  personal  influence  of 
Mr.  Fremont.  Others  have  given  the  credit  of  the  fact  mainly 
to  Capt.  Halleck,  sometimes  called  the  father  of  the  constitu 
tion,  a  gentleman  of  great  weight  and  capacity,  who  is  known 
to  have  been  the  draughtsman  of  many  of  its  provisions,  but 
has  since  that  time  given  himself  wholly  to  his  profession  as 
a  lawyer,  and  withdrawn  himself  altogether  from  the  game  of 
political  life.  Be  it  as  it  may,  slavery  is  forever  excluded  from 
California,  and  so  from  that  whole  coast ;  and  that  without 
even  so  much  as  a  word  of  debate  ;  for  this  article  of  the  con 
stitution  was  simply  read  and  passed  by  consent,  in  absolute 
silence.  What  a  fact  of  history,  this,  to  be  the  child  of 
silence  ! 

California  unites  in  its  population  great  elements  of  divers 
ity.  The  50,000  or  60,000  Chinese  simply  stay  as  foreigners. 
The  native  Californian  or  Spanish  race,  comprises  gentlemen 
of  real  respectability,  wealth,  and  character  ;  but  the  inferior 
class  of  herdsmen  and  retainers  that  were,  are  more  wild  and 
vicious,  and  really  more  hopeless,  than  before  the  change  of 
masters.  They  live  on  horseback,  without  contracting  any 
friendship  with  their  horses,  which  might  raise  them  a  little. 
They  are  cruel  to  animals  of  all  kinds,  cowardly  to  superiors, 
ignorant,  superstitious,  frivolous,  with  little  prospect  of  being 
advanced  to  anything  better  hereafter. 


28  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.      [Feb. 

A  considerable  part  of  tlie  emigration  to  California,  since 
we  took  possession,  is  made  up  of  persons  from  the  extreme 
west,  who  crossed  over  by  the  plains — the  class  who  are  called 
Border  Ruffians  with  us,  and  which  there  are  called,  more  or 
less  derisively,  Pikes,  from  Pike  county  in  Missouri.  They 
are,  by  no  means,  any  such  desperate,  or  ruffian  class  of  people, 
as  they  are  just  now  commonly  regarded  here.  They  are,  for 
the  most  part,  uncultivated  and  rough,  crude  in  their  notions 
of  religion,  and  like  all  such  people,  coarse  in  their  prejudices  ; 
but  they  have  great  honesty  and  frankness,  their  impulses  are 
strong,  and  generally  magnanimous.  They  really  contain 
the  staple  qualities,  or  possibilities  of  a  high  character.  They 
have  true  manhood,  which  is  not  to  be  said  of  every  people. 

Another  element  of  the  emigration  is  from  the  southern, 
or  southwestern  states,  comprising  many  gentlemen,  with  their 
families,  who  are  a  great  accession  to  the  society  and  manners 
of  the  cities,  and  particularly  of  San  Francisco;  and,  with 
these,  a  much  larger,  or  at  least  noisier  class  of  broken  down 
politicians,  who  have  fled,  as  it  were,  to  California,  to  farm  the 
voters  and  offices  of  a  new  world,  where  their  stock  of  capital 
has  not  yet  been  exhausted.  The  former  class  comprises  men 
who  appear,  like  Mr.  Stanley,  to  have  emigrated  rather  to  get 
away  from  political  life,  and  to  apply  themselves  to  other  pur 
suits.  The  latter,  trained  to  public  speaking  and  the  manage 
ment  of  assemblies,  and  having  this  for  their  trade,  have  hith 
erto  been  able  to  obtain  almost  all  the  offices  of  the  state,  and 
have  distributed  the  rewards  of  office  to  themselves,  in  a  scale 
of  unexampled  liberality.  Happily  there  was  an  end  to  the 
credit  of  the  state,  and  that  limit  has  been  finally  reached. 
The  bankrupt  people  too,  are  beginning  to  ask  questions  they 
had  no  time  to  ask  before ;  competitors  also  are  coming  into 
the  field,  whose  morality  and  trustworthiness  in  other  relations 
have  been  already  proved.  The  dynasty  of  plunder,  there 
fore,  is  rapidly  coming  to  an  end. 

Another  large  class  of  the  emigration  is  from  New  England, 
New  York  and  the  Middle  and  Northwestern  states.  And 
these  again  are  in  two  classes.  First  the  merchants,  bankers, 
lawyers,  engineers,  surveyors,  and  many  of  the  head  miners — 


1858.]     California^  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  29 

men  who  have  come  to  California  as  to  a  field  of  enterprise, 
and  who  bend  all  their  energies  to  the  particular  personal 
calling  that  engages  them.  Secondly,  a  class  of  reprobates  in 
all  styles  and  degrees,  who  find  their  way  to  California,  just  be 
cause  they  are  not  wanted  anywhere.  These  are  the  fugitives 
from  justice,  the  absconding  bigamists,  the  felons  and  prison 
birds  who  want  a  new  field  where  they  are  not  known,  de- 
fa!  cators,  pimps,  shoulder  strikers  and  prize  fighters,  drunkards, 
sous  that  could  not  be  endured  at  home,  and  vagabond  gentle 
men  whose  friends  have  been  willing  to  escape  the  burden  of 
their  support,  by  giving  them  an  outfit  for  some  very  distant 
region.  These  and  such  like  characters  were  turned  for  a 
time,  in  shoals,  upon  California.  But  the  pistol,  the  knife, 
the  halter,  the  bad  liquors,  and  the  Vigilance  Committees  are 
scattering  them  rapidly  and  killing  them  off.  They  flourished 
for  a  time,  as  the  under-fighters  and  ballot-box  operators  of 
the  politician  class  just  referred  to ;  assuming  the  alliance 
to  be  one  of  natural  good  fellowship,  inasmuch  as  they  too 
use  the  tools  of  honor  themselves.  But  their  trade  is  gone, 
they  cannot  even  be  drunk  in  the  streets,  or  draw  a  knife  out 
of  their  jpcket,  without  a  painfully  certain  prospect  of  ap 
pearing  in  the  chain  gang  the  next  morning.  Meantime,  the 
former  and  better  class  above  named,  with  many  of  the  better 
class  from  the  South,  are  building  churches,  organizing  insti 
tutions,  looking  after  charities,  and  showing  more  and  more 
distinctly  that  the  great  hope  of  California  is  in  them.  They 
will  even  consent  to  serve  on  juries,  and  some  of  them  also  to 
be  named  for  public  ofiices  of  trust  and  power,  which  formerly 
they  would  not.  Time  is  giving  them  the  controlling  posi 
tion,  as  by  a  kind  of  necessary  process,  and  even  compelling 
them  to  assume  it. 

The  composition,  or  the  combined  elements  of  the  emigra 
tion,  it  will  be  seen,  are  not  favorable  to  the  immediate  coales 
cence  of  the  new  state,  in  terms  of  order  and  public  virtue. 
Besides  a  good  many  hostile  influences  of  a  more  special  char 
acter,  it  will  be  easy  to  perceive,  concur  in  detaining  or  hold 
ing  back  the  new  community,  from  the  kind  of  civil  adminis 
tration  necessary  to  its  good  name  and  social  comfort. 


30  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.      [Feb. 

Thus,  in  the  mining  towns,  are  gathered  large  bodies  of 
men,  without  wives  or  children,  living  as  cenobites  in  their 
dens,  and  no  one  needs  to  be  informed  that  men,  living  sepa 
rately  from  women,  are  sure  to  make  a  large  stride  towards 
barbarism.  The  occupation  of  mining  is  also  more  adventur 
ous  in  itself,  than  consists  with  the  best  habits  of  application  ; 
for  if  the  digging  is  a  venture,  why  should  there  not  be  a 
venture  at  the  gambling  table,  without  the  digging  ?  It  is 
not  unfrequent  that  the  placer  mining  gives  out,  and  it  is 
known  to  be  always  more  or  less  precarious.  Hence  many  of 
the  towns  are  mere  encampments,  and  are  called  "  camps." 
And  Kome  that  assumed  to  be  more  are  already  given  up  and 
nearly  forsaken.  Hence  the  miners  become  more  or  less  migra 
tory  themselves,  and  their  towns  are  too  nearly  so,  many  of 
them,  to  be  much  cared  for,  either  in  the  building,  or  in  the 
establishment  of  social  and  religious  institutions.  A  stranger, 
too,  will  see  a  very  distinct  and  significant  character  in  the 
names  given  to  places  ;  such  as  Yankee  Jim,  Fiddletown, 
Jackass'  Gulch,  Whisky  Bar,  and  a  whole  hundred  names,  of 
which,  these  are  the  choicer  specimens.  It  appears  to  be  the 
general  opinion,  that  there  is  a  decided  moral  and  social  im 
provement  in  the  mining  population.  But  one  who  has  at 
tended  church  for  two  Sundays,  in  a  mining  town  of  the  very 
first  order,  finding  about  forty  persons  present  to  hear  a  good 
Christian  sermon,  and  passing  in  the  street  when  returning 
from  church,  in  both  cases,  full  five  hundred  men,  who  had 
rushed  together  as  spectators  of  a  street  fight,  will  hardly 
think  it  possible  that  there  should  have  been  a  very  great 
moral  improvement  there. 

Agriculture,  too,  has  been  connected,  in  California,  with 
unwonted  and  even  wholly  peculiar  causes  of  moral  deterio 
ration.  The  titles  to  land  have  many  of  them  been  so  uncer 
tain,  or  so  far  unsettled,  by  frauds  and  charges  of  fraud,  that 
there  has  been  a  natural  reluctance  in  emigrants  to  incur  the 
risk  of  a  loss,  in  purchasing  the  soil.  Hence,  also,  in  part, 
the  very  peculiar  kind  of  squatting  that  has  come  into  vogue 
in  California,  and  probably  a  full  half  of  the  agriculture  of 
the  state  is  either  now,  or  at  some  former  time,  has  been 


1858.]    California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  31 

carried  on,  as  an  operation  of  squatting  in  this  manner,  viz, 
by  taking  possession  of  lands  generally  known  to  be  vested 
in  private  owners  by  a  title  derived  from  the  Mexican  govern 
ment,  and  not  in  the  United  States  as  in  other  new  territories, 
where  the  laws  of  Congress  authorize  the  occupation  and 
make  it  a  perfectly  legitimate  act.  An  American  purchaser, 
for  example,  buys  one  of  the  old  Mission  properties,  com 
prising  a  tract,  seven  or  eight  miles  square,  of  the  very  best 
land  in  California,  and  everybody  knows  the  title  to  be  per 
fect,  because  the  land  has  been  held  and  occupied  by  the 
Mission,  for  more  than  fifty  years.  He  expends  over  $100,000 
in  fencing  it,  and  the  property  rises  in  value  so  rapidly,  that 
he  begins  to  be  rated  and  to  rate  himself  as  being  worth,  at 
least,  a  million  of  dollars.  But  behold,  a  cloud  of  squatters 
suddenly  appears  pouring  in  upon  his  lands,  squatting  inside 
of  his  fences  and  among  his  wheat,  erecting  their  tents  or 
huts,  and  leaving  him  to  pay  the  taxes,  while  they  reap  the 
harvests.  He  is  now  the  bankrupt  purchaser  and  they  are 
the  occupants,  till  at  least  six  or  eight  years  of  litigation, 
terminated  at  Washington,  have  established  the  title  in  his 
creditors,  which  everybody  knew  was  in  himself.  Meantime 
they  have  gotten  the  use  or  rent  for  so  many  years,  which  is 
to  them  a  handsome  outfit.  The  old  native  Californians  are 
treated  in  the  same  way.  No  chapter  of  wrong  and  oppress 
ion,  in  which  our  countrymen  have  had  their  part,  is  more 
sad  or  revolting.  Even  between  the  old  ranchero's  house  and 
well,  the  squatter  has  taken  his  post  and  set  up  his  hut. 
Then,  assuming  also  that  the  cattle  are  wild,  as  that  the 
lands  are  public,  the  squatter  wanting  a  steak  has  taken  his 
rifle  and  killed  an  ox.  And  so  the  poor  herdsman  has  been 
stripped  both  of  lands  and  herds,  by  these  remorseless  Sabeans, 
and  that  with  airs  of  indignity  and  low-bred  consequence, 
more  difficult  to  bear  than  the  robberies  themselves.  The 
truculent  savage  spirit  generated  by  these  land-piracies,  will 
be  readily  understood.  The  tragedy  of  young  Sunole  is 
happily  an  extreme  instance.  lie  was  a  gentleman,  educa 
ted,  as  we  have  heard,  in  Paris,  equal,  if  not  superior,  in  per 
sonal  accomplishments,  to  most  of  the  educated  Americans. 


32  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.      [Feb. 

But  he  ventured  to  remonstrate  very  gently  with  a  squatter 
for  cutting  down  the  trees  of  his  father's  exquisite  little  val 
ley  in  the  mountains,  and  selling  them  for  wood,  giving  him 
liberty  at  the  same  time,  to  cut  what  he  wanted  for  himself; 
but  the  next  time  he  passed  by,  on  his  way  over  to  the 
ranch,  in  company  with  a  friend,  the  savage  came  out  with 
his  rifle,  got  him  in  range  as  he  threw  himself  over  on  the 
side  of  his  horse,  and  drew  him  dead  to  the  ground.  Sheltered 
and  secreted  by  others  like  himself,  he  could  never  be  found. 
As  the  titles  are  now  being  settled  by  the  decisions  of  the 
courts,  the  squatters  are  very  gradually  yielding  to  the  law 
and  becoming  purchasers.  All  these  wrongs  will  finally  be  a 
thing  of  the  past. 

By  the  very  latest  advices,  it  appears  that  the  squatter 
combination  is  just  beginning  to  yield  some  respect  to  the 
decisions  of  law.  Heretofore  the  owners,  in  establishing  their 
title,  have  commonly  not  gotten  possession,  but  only  a  right  to 
pay  the  taxes.  Indeed,  this  third  estate  of  squatterdom  had 
sufficient  power  in  the  legislature,  two  years  ago,  to  get  a  law 
enacted,  requiring  owners,  when  dislodging  or  ejecting  them, 
to  pay  for  the  improvements,  according  to  the  apprisal  of  a 
committee  from  the  precinct ;  a  plan  by  which  they  expected 
to  get  back  the  value  of  the  land  ;  for  the  apprisers  would 
be  squatters  almost  of  course.  Happily  the  courts  would 
not  execute  the  law.  And  but  a  year  since,  the  venerable 
patriarch  of  the  Napa  valley,  who  came  over  from  Missouri 
as  a  trapper,  more  than  forty  years  ago,  having  finally 
established  his  old  homestead  title,  comprising  eight  or  ten 
thousand  acres  of  the  best  land  in  the  state,  was  evidently 
beginning  also  to  find  a  much  harder  question  on  his  hands  ; 
viz,  how  to  move  the  squatters  without  periling  his  life. 
And  yet,  among  these  land-pirates,  called  squatters,  are  a 
great  many  persons  from  the  East,  and  even  from  Massa 
chusetts  and  Connecticut ;  and,  what  is  more,  from  our  Chris 
tian  churches ;  and  some  of  them  appear  even  now  to  be 
seriously  minded  and  conscientious  in  their  life.  Because 
the  same  word,  squatter,  is  used  to  designate  this  known  act 
of  robbery,  (for  it  is  often  such  and  nothing  else,)  they  really 


1858.]     California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  33 

suppose  that  they  are  doing  the  same  lawful  and  right  thing, 
which  is  practiced  under  the  acts  of  Congress,  at  the  West. 

As  the  mining  and  the  agriculture  of  California  appear,  thus 
far,  to  have  been  connected  with  unpropitious  moral  influ 
ences,  so  also  it  has  been,  even  to  a  much  greater  degree, 
with  the  trade  of  politics.  Composed  of  elements  so  various 
and  repellant,  it  was  not  to  be  expected,  for  a  time,  that  there 
would  be  much  confidence  in  public  men  or  proceedings. 
And  the  moral  character  of  the  political  operators  and  office 
holders  was  generally  not  of  a  kind  to  inspire  confidence. 
They  were  gamblers,  debauchees,  drunkards,  men  who  lined 
their  bosoms,  not  with  virtue,  but  with  knives  and  pistols. 
They  were  just  such  men,  in  short,  as  could  never  be  in  confi 
dence,  even  if  they  violated  no  trust.  The  bullies  they  had  in 
their  employ,  as  inspectors  of  the  ballot,  could  not  swear  to  a 
true  count  and  be  believed.  Juries  wrere  distrusted,  because 
the  panel  was  so  easily  made  up,  to  include  one  whom  the 
criminal,  on  trial,  might  "  hang,"  to  stand  out  for  him  in  the 
verdict.  The  judges  were  such  characters  that  they  plainly 
ought  to  be  bribed,  if  they  were  not.  Administrators  and 
trustees  were  suspected,  as  being  appointed  by  the  connivance 
of  judges.  Legislators  and  governors  were  distrusted  also. 
This  distrust  became,  in  due  time,  a  torment  to  the  public 
peace,  by  its  uncertainty ;  and  none  the  less  a  torment  that 
the  worst  rumors  and  suspicions  were  most  likely  to  be  true  ; 
till  finally,  everything  bad  began  to  be  true  ;  and  the  public 
prints  to  make  a  point  of  heroism,  in  dealing  out  their  accusa 
tions  with  unsparing  boldness.  A  stranger  could  hardly  guess 
what  it  meant.  Every  print  was  for  California.  Nothing 
too  laudatory  could  be  said  for  it ;  meantime,  as  if  a  paradisaic 
whole  could  be  made  up  of  diabolical  particulars,  the  sweep 
ing  denunciations  of  individuals  appeared  to  have  no  honest 
man  in  it.  And  what  was  most  remarkable  in  all  these  accu 
sations,  was  that  every  charge  made  against  judges  and  others 
of  bribery,  or  of  fraud,  was  given  circumstantially  ;  names, 
dates,  amounts,  agents,  all  stated  with  exactness.  Probably  a 
very  considerable  share  of  these  charges  of  bribery,  and  per 
jury,  and  fraud,  were  true.  But  the  misery  was,  that  no  one 


34:  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.      [Feb. 

could  guess  which.  Society  was  dissolved  and  law  reduced  to 
an  instrument  of  suspicion.  It  was  a  state  most  bitter  and 
even  horrible.  Whether  their  facts  were  only  suspicions  and 
rumors  converted  into  facts  by  repetition,  or  real  and  veri 
table  truths  of  history  ;  whether  it  was  the  licentiousness  of  the 
press  or  its  uncommon  fidelity ;  or  whether,  possibly,  it  was 
not  all  the  fatality  which  attends  every  community  where 
confidence  is  gone,  no  one  could  know,  or  satisfactorily  judge. 
Be  it  as  it  may,  out  of  this  general  distrust  and  demoraliza 
tion,  came  the  Yigilance  Committee.  It  was  raised  by  the 
torture  that  exasperates  society  when  confidence  is  gone.  So 
far  not  to  sympathize  with  it  is  impossible,  and  the  more  that 
almost  all  the  better  citizens  were  in  it.  Even  Christian  pro 
fessors  left  the  church  and  the  communion,  to  be  in  the  out 
break,  and  bear  arms  in  that  vast  congregation,  gathered  as  a 
'thunder-cloud  round  the  jail,  on  the  distant  hill  side. 

It  is  not  our  design  to  discuss  the  committee.  Suffice  it  to 
say,  that  their  intent  was  good,  their  proceedings  honest  and 
carefully  deliberate,  and  their  military  conduct  admirably  de 
cisive  and  efficient.  Their  great  fault  was  that  they  did  not 
see  their  point  exactly,  and  offered  reasons  for  their  action, 
a  great  deal  worse  than  their  action.  If  they  had  undertaken, 
not  to  administer  the  laws,  or  take  them  back  into  their  own 
hands,  but  to  restore  the  laws,  by  plucking  down  the  usurpers, 
who  stood  in  no  right  of  law,  being  elected  only  by  the  perjury 
of  the  inspectors,  their  question  would  have  been  greatly  simpli 
fied.  Then,  because  of  the  almost  impossibility  of  convicting 
the  perjured  inspectors,  by  any  ordinary  proceedings  of  law, 
they  would  only  have  done  it  by  extraordinary  ;  and  it  would 
have  been  all  the  better  if,  to  make  a  due  impression  of  this 
crime,  as  the  greatest  of  all  crimes,  they  had  sacked  the  whole 
tribe,  be  they  many  or  few,  and  sunk  them  in  the  bottom 
of  the  Bay.  Doing  this,  instead  of  resuming  functions,  the 
right  of  which  strikes  at  the  root  of  all  constitutional  govern 
ment,  they  need  only  have  insisted  on  some  extraordinary 
means  of  restoring  functions  already  taken  away.  The  whole 
experiment  was  critical,  more  critical  than  our  eastern  com 
munities  know ;  for  there  was  a  time,  a  terrible  twelve  hours, 


1858.]     California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.          35 

just  after  the  release  of  Judge  Terry,  when  the  question  of  a 
new  Executive  Committee,  who  should  be  more  efficient  and 
bolder,  i.  e.,  more  bloody,  was  pending  and  apparently  just 
ready  to  be  carried  by  the  whirlwind  of  passion  outside  ; 
which  new  committee,  if  it  had  not  been  dexterously  avoided, 
would  have  been  like  the  new  committee  of  Paris,  and  similar 
scenes  would  probably  have  followed.  The  escape  was  nar 
row,  so  narrow  that  if  the  leading  gentlemen  concerned  had 
now  the  question  of  a  new  vigilance  committee  movement  on 
hand,  they  would  probably  hesitate  long.  And  yet  it  must  be 
granted  for  the  honor  of  this  same  questionable,  perilous  adven 
ture  of  reform,  that  San  Francisco  is  probably  now  the  best 
governed  city  in  the  union.  The  laws  are  now  enforced, 
the  economies  are  duly  attended  to,  there  is  no  plunder, 
and  every  evil  doer  stands  in  fear.  It  is  the  beginning,  ap 
parently,  of  a  great  moral  reaction,  which  is  felt  by  the 
whole  state.  Whatever  may  be  true,  therefore,  of  this  great 
popular  movement,  whether  it  is  right  or  wrong,  wise  or  un 
wise,  it  will  be  impossible  ever  to  turn  it  as  a  reproach  on  the 
certainly  patriotic  men  wTho  were  foremost  in  it.  They  are 
much  more  likely  to  be  celebrated  hereafter,  with  Plarmodius 
and  Aristogiton  and  other  great  leaders  of  mutiny,  that  have 
been  deliverers  of  their  country. 

We  state  these  facts  concerning  the  moral  aspects  of  mining; 
the  occupation,  by  force,  of  lands  known  to  be  held  by  a  legal 
right ;  and  the  usurpations  and  perjuries  and  briberies  of  polit 
ical  intriguers  and  demagogues,  connected  with  the  general 
destruction  of  confidence  and  the  necessary  throes  of  violence 
by  which  they  must  inevitably  be  redressed,  not  as  being,  in 
themselves,  any  picture  of  California.  We  know  that  they 
are  not.  They  are  only  facts,  without  which  any  description  is 
rose  colored  and  without  sound  verity, — such  facts  as  will 
meet  a  stranger  first,  because  they  are  most  outstanding  and 
impressive.  And  for  this  the  reader  will  make  due  allowance, 
even  as  in  reading  any  history ;  for  it  is  not  the  virtues  and 
the  smooth  and  silent  flowings  of  goodness  that  make  up  ever 
the  staple  of  a  history,  but  the  explosive  wrongs  and  outrages 
rather,  by  which  the  evenness  of  good  was  disturbed.  For  our- 


36  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.     [Feb. 

selves  we  regard  these  facts,  not  with  any  feeling  of  despair  or 
discouragement.  On  the  contrary,  we  perceive  a  certain  sub 
limity,  in  the  contest  here  begun  and  the  clearing  process  going 
forward,  which  creates  appetite  in  us.  We  know  the  cer 
tain  victory,  we  see  it  coining,  and  we  envy  especially  those 
young  heroic  spirits  who  have  set  themselves,  in  the  love  of 
God  and  their  newly  adopted  state,  to  such  works  of  duty  and 
sacrifice,  as  are  necessary  to  the  sublime  future  they  have  in 
prospect. 

Opposite  to  these  facts  that  we  have  stated  are  others,  which 
awaken  our  respect  and  inspire  our  confidence.  They  have  a 
good  and  able  ministry,  for  example,  such  a  ministry  as  will 
compare  favorably,  in  all  the  denominations,  with  any  of  the 
older  states.  They  have  churches  in  every  denomination,  not 
inferior  to  churches  here.  The  attendance  is  good,  especially 
in  the  cities,  and  the  order,  the  dress,  the  music  are  only  too 
much  evened  by  the  manner  of  the  East. 

The  Sabbath  also  is  becoming  a  more  established  institution, 
and  to-be  without  a  Sabbath,  as  a  day  of  rest,  is  more  and 
more  distinctly  felt  to  be  an  oppression.  And  therefore  the 
traders  and  shopkeepers,  in  most  of  the  country  villages,  are 
petitioning  the  Legislature,  more  earnestly  every  year,  for  the 
establishment  of  a  complete  suspension  of  trade. 

Education  is  not  forgotten.  The  towns  and  cities  are  allow 
ed  by  statute  to  tax  themselves  for  this  purpose,  and  many  of 
them  do  it  most  liberally.  The  public  schools  of  San  Francisco 
are  not  inferior  to  those  of  our  Eastern  cities — many  think 
them  even  superior. 

There  is  no  reason  to  apprehend  any  loss  of  natural  vigor 
and  tone  from  the  climate  on  that  shore.  Some  have  taken  it 
as  a  bad  indication  that  the  Digger  Indians,  (the  aboriginals 
of  California,)  are  the  most  spiritless  and  abject  of  all  known 
tribes  on  the  continent,  and  about  the  lowest  specimens  of  hu 
manity  known  upon  the  earth.  But  this  may  be  sufficiently 
accounted  for,  by  the  general  softness  of  the  climate  and  the 
fact  that  they  have  never  been  required  to  feed  themselves  by 
the  manly  exploits  of  hunter-life ;  having  always  at  hand 
enough  of  bugs,  and  fish,  and  sugar  pine  bark  to  serve  their 
.purpose.  Sometimes  also  a  degree  of  discouragement  has 


1858.]      California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.         37 

been  derived  from  'the  analogical  or  symbolical  fact,  that 
there  is  not  a  stick  of  smart,  hard  timber  in  all  California ; 
nothing  out  of  which  an  axe  handle,  or  a  spoke,  or  a  felley 
could  be  made  ;  every  hardest,  soundest  tree,  even  the  oak, 
being  always  brittle  to  such  a  degree  ("  brash  "  they  say  in 
California,  and  in  New  England  "  spalt ")  that  the  trunk 
will  commonly  break  asunder  five  or  six  times  when  it  is  fell 
ed,  and  lie  as  a  pile  of  fragments  on  the  ground,  even  though 
it  is  three  feet  in  diameter.  Is  this  a  natural  token,  some 
have  asked,  with  a  little  feeling  of  superstition,  that  the  future 
men  of  California  are  to  be  only  a  brittle  or  brash  stock  and 
without  any  real  timber  of  endurance  in  them  ?  Why  any 
more  a  token  than  the  giant  pines,  and  redwoods,  and  cedars 
are  a  token  of  prodigiously  tall  men,  a  race  at  least  twelve  or 
fifteen  feet  high  ?  "Why  any  more  than  the  often  naked  hills 
and  plains  are  a  token  of  no  men  at  all  ?  "What  other  sign  do 
we  in  fact  require  that  the  future  stock  of  California  will  be 
a  stock  of  high  capacity,  than  that  the  climate  is  healthy,  the 
growths  bountiful,  and  that  we  are  capable  ourselves  of  the 
greatest  endurance  there,  both  bodily  and  mental,  and  have, 
in  fact,  a  sense  of  robustness  that  we  have  nowhere  else  ? 

At  the  same  time,  it  requires  no  gift  of  prophecy  to  perceive, 
in  the  physical  resources  and  commercial  advantages  of  that 
country,  that  an  immense  wealth  is,  in  due  time,  to  be  devel 
oped  there,  such  wealth  as  will  give  vigor  to  all  institutions 
and  works  that  require  expense,  and  put  everything  on  a  scale 
of  breadth  and  magnificence.  If  there  is  any  country  in  the 
world  where  the  future  men  are  not  to  be  cramped  and  whit 
tled  by  close  restrictions,  it  is  California.  At  present  the  Cal 
ifornians  say  that  they  are  poor ;  they  feel  poor,  because  they 
are  now  at  the  dead  point  of  retrocession,  where  their  extrav 
agant  expectations  are  being  shortened  in  for  that  second  be 
ginning,  which  every  new  state .  and  city  has  to  make.  And 
yet  there  is  nothing  more  wonderful,  with  all  this  depression, 
than  the  amount  of  wealth  already  created  on  that  shore. 
How  many  thousand  years  of  day  labor  has  it  taken  simply 
to  build  so  many  houses,  fences,  shops,  steamers,  ditches, 
towns  and  cities.  Three  of  these  cities,  San  Francisco,  Sacra- 


38  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.      [Feb. 

mento  and  Marysville,  have  so  much  of.  city  life  and  charac 
ter,  that  we  hardly  recognize  their  newness.  And  yet  only 
nine  years  have  passed,  since  all  this  immense  wealth  began 
to  be  created ! — and  that,  5,000  miles  away,  on  the  shore,  as  it 
were,  of  another  continent. 

There  is  good  and  cultivated  society  in  California,  such  as 
there  never  has  been  in  any  other  new  state  in  the  Union.  The 
number  of  liberally  educated  men  is  greater  by  far,  than  was  ever 
found  in  any  other  state  of  twice  the  same  political  age.  Car 
pets,  good  beds,  clean  tables,  bright  knives  and  forks,  courtesy, 
hospitality,  public  entertainments  and  pleasures  on  a  footing  of 
civilization — all  these  indications  of  comfort  and  society  are 
widely  diffused.  One  sign  or  token  of  this  kind  we  cannot  for 
bear  to  mention,  because  it  signifies  much.  Passing  hither  and 
thither  on  the  little  steamers,  up  to  Marysville,  to  Stockton, 
to  the  towns  north  of  the  bay,  where  often  the  number  of  pas 
sengers  did  not  exceed  thirty,  we  have  seen,  again  and  again, 
a  table  most  neatly  set,  the  silver  bright  and  clean,  the  meats 
well  prepared  and  good,  without  any  nonsense  of  show  dishes,  the 
servants  tidy,  quiet,  and  respectful — in  short,  the  whole  figure 
of  the  entertainment  more  rational  and  better  than  we  have 
ever  seen,  either  on  the  boats  of  the  Mississippi  or  of  the  At 
lantic  coast.  Such  facts  indicate  society,  more  than  any  most 
splendid  entertainment  gotten  up  by  private  opulence  can. 

One  other  consideration  must  be  named,  if  California  is 
to  be  well  understood ;  viz,  that  with  all  the  violence  and  the 
savage  wrongs  and  dark  vices  that  have  heretofore  abounded 
there,  they  seldom  do  a  mean  thing.  They  can  perpetrate 
real  atrocities,  but  they  must  be  generous.  A  considerable 
part  of  their  blameable  profusion  comes  of  their  extreme 
jealousy  of  littleness,  or  meanness.  Men  really  poor  will 
often  share  their  last  dollar  in  helping  a  sick  friend,  or 
even  a  sick  stranger.  If  a  poor  minister,  whom  they  have 
only  seen  at  their  funerals,  is  known  to  be  on  short  allowance, 
they  will  have  a  ticketed  supper,  not  unlikely,  to  help  him ; 
which,  if  it  is  not  the  best  way  of  establishing  religion,  does 
at  least  show  their  generosity.  If  a  preacher  asks  the  privilege 
of  addressing  them  in  a  gambling  saloon,  on  Sunday,  they 


1858.]     California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.  39 

are  very  likely  to  accede,  to  hear  him  respectfully,  pass  round  a 
hat  and  make  up  a  liberal  purse  for  him,  then  put  down 
their  stakes  and  resume  the  play !  The  recent  vote  of  the 
people  to  assume  and  pay  the  state  debt  was  an  act  of  pure 
magnanimity.  Here  was  a  debt  of  $5,000,000  which  was 
expressly  forbidden  by  the  constitution  of  the  state.  This 
provision  of  the  constitution  was  known,  discussed,  openly 
understood,  and  the  loan  was  obtained  directly  in  the  face 
of  it.  The  money  too  had  gone  for  nothing  but  to  feed  the 
political  vampires,  for  whose  plunder  it  was  raised,  and  the 
state  has  not  a  vestige  of  property  to  show  for  it,  but  some 
old  benches,  that  belonged  to  the  state  house  at  Yallejo. 
If  then  a  people  have  any  right,  by  constitution,  to  guard 
themselves  against  being  plundered  by  their  rulers,  the 
people  of  California  had  a  right  to  stand  upon  the  restriction 
so  prudently  established  in  their  constitution,  and  were 
under  no  obligations,  whether  of  right  or  of  honor,  to  pay 
this  debt — to  refuse  was  no  act  of  repudiation.  But  their  in 
stincts  were  too  generous,  they  had  too  much  pride  of  feeling 
to  insist  on  their  right.  Where  Mississippi  raised  a  quibble  to 
get  off  from  her  honest  debt,  California  took  a  gratuitous  obli 
gation  to  get  it  on,  and  to  fasten  it. 

There  remains  a  single  topic  to  which,  in  the  conclusion  of 
our  article,  already  too  far  extended,  we  must  briefly  refer ; 
viz,  to  the  effort  now  on  foot  to  establish  a  College  or  Univer 
sity  in  California.  The  heaviest  detraction,  after  all,  from  the 
future  prospects  of  California,  is  in  the  fact  that  so  many  go 
thither  only  as  adventurers,  not  meaning  to  stay,  and  that  so 
many,  often  the  most  prosperous,  are  continually  returning. 
And  they  do  it,  in  great  part,  because  they  cannot  educate 
their  families  there,  as  their  means  allow  them  to  desire.  In 
the  first  place,  many  never  take  out  their  families  for  this 
reason,  and,  in  the  next  place,  when  they  have  done  it,  and 
their  sons  are  grown  up  to  the  age  at  which  they  begin 
to  want  the  best  advantages,  they  return  with  them,  and  are 
so  lost  to  the  state  as  a  family  ;  for  the  distance  and  the  moral 
perils  of  a  separation  from  parents  are  so  great,  that  there  is 
no  alternative,  but  a  re-emigration.  This  begets  an  unsettled 


4:0  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.       [Feb. 

feeling  in  those  who  remain,  which  makes  them  careless  often 
of  the  good  of  the  state,  and,  besides,  it  carries  off  a  large 
percentage  of  the  wealth  created ;  for  the  families  that  return 
are  commonly  such  as  have  been  most  successful,  and  all 
which  they  have  gained  is  carried  with  them.  And  the 
probability  is,  that  if  the  contemplated  railroad  were  built 
across  the  Continent,  (which  it  will  not  be  for  a  long  time  to 
come,)  it  would  scarcely  help  them  at  all,  but  might  rather 
hasten  them  in  this  losing  process. 

"What  they  want  therefore  at  this  time,  above  all  things  else, 
is  a  good  College  or  University.  Such  an  institution  would 
do  more  to  consolidate  and  settle  their  state,  and  to  settle  the 
confidence  of  their  future,  than  even  the  railroad  itself. 
There  are  no  five  states  together  in  our  western  world,  which, 
if  they  had  none  at  all,  would  want  an  institution  of  this  kind 
so  much  as  California.  For  the  supply  of  this  want,  some  of 
their  best  and  ablest  men  are  preparing.  They  have  had  a 
charter  for  three  years,  organizing  the  "  College  of  California." 
Their  Board  of  Trustees  contains  a  representation  of  all  the 
Christian  denominations,  who  are  united  in  cordiality  and 
good  understanding.  They  are  said  to  have  lately  fixed  on 
their  site — on  the  eastern  side  of  the  Bay,  opposite  San  Fran 
cisco.  They  have  had  a  preparatory  school  for  three  years 
past,  under  the  tuition  of  Rev.  Henry  Durant,  an  accom 
plished  scholar  and  a  Christian,  and  the  design  is  to  organize 
a  Freshman  Class  the  coming  autumn. 

What  then  is  wanted  now  is  the  endowment,  and  for  this 
everything  is  ready.  To  obtain  this  endowment  in  California, 
except  in  part,  will  now  be  impossible.  Much  of  the  wealth 
is  not  in  the  right  hands,  and  where  it  is  not,  where  there  is 
every  disposition  to  aid.  the  possibility  is  very  much  reduced 
by  the  heavy  loads  of  debt,  which  many  who  ought  to  be 
rich,  are  required  just  now  to  carry.  When  money  will  bring 
three  per  cent,  a  month,  year  by  year,  on  perfect  security,  the 
lending  party  is  not  likely  to  put  much  of  it  in  a  College,  and 
the  borrowing  party  still  less.  Are  there  no  great  rich  men 
in  the  East,  no  millionaires  or  less  in  computation,  who  will 
be  induced  to  look  at  such  an  opportunity?  Had  we  the 


1858.]     California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.          41 

fortune  of  but  half  a  million,  in  our  editorial  hands,  we  are 
quite  sure  of  this,  that  whoever  might  want  to  assume  the  en 
dowment  of  such  an  institution,  would  have  to  be  very  quick 
in  his  action,  or  he  would  lose  the  chance.  What  an  opportu 
nity  for  the  man  of  fortune,  who  has  no  object  in  life,  no  fam 
ily  to  provide  for,  or  none  but  such  as  are  already  rich  enough, 
and  who  would  be  greatly  more  ennobled  by  his  name  and 
example,  as  the  founder  of  such  an  institution,  than  by  all  his 
property  without  the  name.  How  many  such  too  are  there 
who  are  really  meaning,  when  they  die,  to  accomplish  some 
great  work  with  their  money !  Why  not  do  it  when  they  are 
living,  and  have  the  satisfaction  of  a  consciousness  enriched 
and  a  heart  enlarged  by  their  beneficence?  To  have  one's 
name  on  such  an  institution  as  this,  connected  with  the  great 
history  and  with  all  the  learning,  and  all  the  most  forward  in 
fluences  of  this  new  world  on  the  Pacific,  is  a  thought  which 
might  quicken  the  blood  even  of  a  man  most  sluggish  and 
dull.  For  it  is  to  win  a  greater  honor,  by  many  times,  than 
to  be  President  of  our  great  Republic.  That  is  an  honor, 
which,  as  the  line  grows  longer,  loses  more  and  more  its  sig 
nificance,  till  finally,  it  will  signify  as  little  to  have  been 
one  of  the  Presidents  as  to  have  been  one  of  the  Doges  of 
Venice.  But  the  other,  like  the  names  of  Harvard  and  Yale, 
will  brighten  and  gather  to  itself  a  greater  weight  and  power, 
as  long  as  the  tongue  itself  may  exist.  And  the  satisfaction 
one  may  have  in  this  honor  is  sublimely  justified  in  the  fact, 
that  he  is  not  merely  to  be  known,  or  mentioned  in  the  future 
ages  of  the  world — that  might  be  a  very  common  ambition, 
for  who  is  there  who  does  even  naturally  desire  as  much  ? — but 
is  permitted  to  know  that  his  name  is  to  be  a  power,  and 
to  work  for  all  the  coming  ages,  growing  brighter  and  doing 
more  good  even  than  he  himself  while  living.  That  is  a  legiti 
mate  and  glorious  ambition — the  highest  that  a  mortal  can 
cherish.  The  Trustees,  in  the  Appeal  they  published  a  year 
ago,  placed  the  subject  thus : 

"  Could  some  rich  citizen,  who  can  do  it  without  injury  to 
himself,  step  forward  at  this  time  of  our  beginning,  and  set  his 
name  upon  the  institution  itself,  by  the  side  of  a  Harvard  or 


42  California,  its  Characteristics  and  Prospects.      [Feb. 

a  Yale,  by  subscribing  a  large  part  of  the  proposed  endow 
ment  ;  giving  us  an  opportunity,  assisted  by  Lis  beginning  and 
example,  to  carry  up  the  subscription  even  to  the  highest  point 
we  have  named,  he  would  be  enriched  by  the  sense  of  his  mu 
nificence,  as  no  man  ever  was  or  can  be  by  the  count  of  his 
money.  We  have  no  delicacy  in  respect  to  the  customary 
honors  conferred  by  universities,  when  they  set  the  names  of 
their  benefactors  on  the  halls,  libraries  and  professorships 
endowed  by  their  munificence ;  or  when  they  drop  the  dry, 
impersonal  name  of  their  charter  for  one  that  represents  the 
public  spirit,  and  the  living  heart  of  a  living  man  who  could 
be  more  than  rich,  the  patron  of  learning,  the  benefactor  and 
father  of  the  coming  ages.  These  are  monuments  that  may 
well  provoke  a  degree  of  ambition ;  not  even  an  Egyptian 
pyramid  raised  over  a  man's  ashes  could  so  far  ennoble  him,  as 
to  have  the  learning  and  science  of  long  ages  and  eternal 
realms  of  history  superscribed  by  his  name.  And  yet  this 
better  kind  of  monument  is  itself  a  power  so  beneficent,  that 
he  ought,  even  as  duty,  to  desire  it,  and  for  no  false  modesty 
decline  it.  Such  monuments  are  not  like  those  of  stone  or 
brass,  which  simply  stand  doing  nothing;  they  are  monuments 
eternally  fruitful,  showing  to  men's  eyes  and  ears  what  belongs 
to  wealth,  and  what  the  founders  of  the  times  gone  by  have 
set  as  examples  of  beneficence." 


ERRATUM. — Page  145,  line  19.      Instead   of  "whence  Call — -fornia"   read — 
"whence  Call— fornia  (Caleo  and/o 


THE    NEW    EIGLAOER 

Is  a  Magazine  devoted  to  the  discussion  of  all  the  great  moral 
questions  of  the  day.  It  is  intended  to  be  an  exponent  of  the 
views  of  New  England  men  on  all  the  questions  which  interest 
Christian  citizens.  It  is  under  the  control  of  a  club  of  gentle 
men  residing  in  New  Haven,  Connecticut.  Among  their 
number  are  the  President  and  many  of  the  Professors  of  Yale 
College,  together  with  some  of  the  Pastors  of  the  Congrega 
tional  churches  in  the  city.  It  receives  also  constant  assistance 
and  contributions  from  many  of  the  ablest  writers  among  the 
sons  of  New  England  in  all  parts  of  the  country. 

The  Magazine  is  published  in  quarterly  numbers,  in  Febru 
ary,  May,  August  and  November.  The  price  is  $3  a  year 
payable  in  advance.  Single  numbers,  $1.  Subscibers  can 
commence  with  the  current  year,  or  with  any  particular  num 
ber,  at  their  option. 

Address  all  letters  to' 

WILLIAM  L.  KINGSLEY, 

Proprietor  and  Editor, 

New  Haven,  Conn. 


CHARACTERISTICS 


PROSPECTS 


<&lnttw  bir  llcb.  fjorate 


£1.  0.,  a«b 


orighmlb  tit  tljc 


SAN    FRANCISCO: 

WHITTOX,   TOWNE   &   GO'S  EXCELSIOR   STEAM  PRESSES, 

Xo.  T25  CLAY  STREET,   CORNER  OF   SAXSOME. 

1858. 


CALIFOKNIA: 


ITS  CHARACTERISTICS  AND  PROSPECTS. 


(Strilim  Jig  $M.  Jorace  §tisljndl,  S.  gl.,  anb  publisljcb  ortginallg  in 

fnghmber." 


SAN  FRANCISCO : 

WHITTON,   TOWNE   &   CO.,  PRINTERS  AND  PUBLISHERS- 

South  West  Corner  Clay  and  Sansome  Streets. 

1858. 


< 
» 


CALIFORNIA, 

ITS  CHARACTERISTICS  AND  PROSPECTS. 


WHOEVER  wishes,  for  health's  sake  or  for  any  other  reason,  to 
change  the  sceneries  or  the  objects  and  associations  of  his  life, 
should  set  off,  not  for  Europe,  but  for  California.  And  this  the  more 
certainly,  if  he  is  a  loving  and  sharp  observer  of  nature  ;  for  nature 
meets  us  here  in  moods  entirely  new  ;  so  that  we,  have  even  to  make 
her  acquaintance  over  again ;  going  back,  as  it  were,  to  be  started 
in  a  fresh  childhood.  All  our  common,  or  previously  formed  im 
pressions,  calculations  and  weather- wisdoms  are  at  fault.  We  find 
that  we  really  understand  nothing  and  have  everything  to  learn.  We 
begin  to  imagine,  for  example,  that  her  way  is  to  be  thus,  or  thus ;  or 
that  her  operations  are  to  be  solved  in  this,  or  thaF  manner,  but  we 
very  soon  discover  that  it  will  not  hold.  Our  guess  must  be  given  up 
and  we  must  try  again.  A  person  who  is  at  all  curious  in  the  study 
of  natural  phenomena,  will  be  held  in  a  puzzle  thus  for  whole  months, 
and  will  nearly  complete  the  cycle  of  the  year,  before  he  seems  to  him 
self  to  have  come  into  any  real  understanding  with  the  new  world  he 
is  in  ;  just  as  if  he  were  sent  on  a  visit  to  Jupiter,  and  wanted  to  sail 
round  the-sun  with  him,  for  at  least  once,  and  feel  out  his  year,  before 
he  can  be  sure  that  he  understands  a  single  day. 

California  being  to  this  extent  a  new  world,  having  its  own  combina 
tions,  characters,  and  colors,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  we  can  make 
any  reader  acquainted  with  it  by  words  of  description.  The  most  we 
can  hope  to  accomplish  is,  that  by  giving  some  notes  on  its  physical 
and  social  characteristics,  we  may  excite  a  a  more  curious  and  possibly 
a  more  intelligent  interest  in  California  life,  and  the  certainly  great 
scenes  preparing  to  be  revealed  in  that  far  off,  outside,  isolated  state 


of  the  Republic.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  every  particular  repre 
sentation  or  suggestion  we  may  offer  will  be  verified  by  the  experi 
ments  and  exact  observations  of  science,  or  by  the  tests  of  moral  and 
economical  statistics  ;  we  only  look  on  with  our  mere  eyes,  giving  our 
impressions,  and  venturing  what  guesses  and  possible  applications  may 
occur  to  us. 

The  first  and  most  difficult  thing  to  apprehend  respecting  California 
is  the  climate,  upon  which,  of  course,  depend  the  advantages  of  health 
and  physical  development,  the  growths  and  their  conditions  and  kinds, 
and  the  modus  operandi,  or  general  cast,  of  the  seasons.  But  this, 
again,  is  scarcely  possible,  without  dismissing,  first  of  all,  the  word 
climate,  and  substituting  the  plural  climates.  For  it  cannot  be  said  of 
California,  as  of  New  England,  or  the  Middle  States,  that  it  has  a  cli 
mate.  On  the  contrary,  it  has  a  great  multitude  of  them,  curiously 
pitched  together,  at  short  distances,  one  from  another,  defying  too,  not 
seldom,  our  most  accepted  notions  of  the  effects  of  latitude  and  altitude 
and  the  defences  of  mountain  ranges.  The  only  way,  therefore,  is  to 
dismiss  generalities,  cease  to  look  for  a  climate,  and  find,  if  we  can,  by 
what  process  the  combinations  and  varieties  are  made  ;  for  when  we 
get  hold  of  the  manner  and  going  on  of  cause,  all  the  varieties  are 
eas'ly  reducible. 

To  make  this  matter  intelligible,  conceive  that  middle  California,  the 
region  of  which  we  now  speak,  lying  between  the  head  waters  of  the 
two  great  rivers,  and  about  four  hundred  and  fifty  or  five  hundred 
miles  long  from  north  to  south,  is  divided  lengthwise,  parallel  to  the 
coast,  into  three  strips,  or  ribands  of  about  equal  width.  First,  the 
coast-wise  region,  comprising  two,  three,  and  sometimes  four  parallel 
tiers  of  mountains,  from  five  hundred  to  four  thousand,  five  thousand, 
or  even  ten  thousand  feet  high.  Next,  advancing  inward,  we  have  a 
middle  strip,  from  fifty  to  seventy  miles  wide,  of  almost  dead  plain, 
which  is  called  t"ne  great  valley  ;  down  the  scarcely  perceptible  slopes 
of  which,  from  south,  to  north,  run  the  two  great  rivers,  the  Sacramento 
and  the  San  Joaquin,  to  join  their  waters  at  the  middle  of  the  basin  and 
pass  off  to  the  sea.  The  third  long  strip  or  riband,  is  the  slope  of  the 
Sierra  Nevada  chain,  which  bounds  the  great  valley  on  the  east,  and 
contains  in  its  foot-hills,  or  rather  in  its  lower  half,  all  the  gold  mines. 
The  upper  half  is,  to  a  great  extent,  bare  granite  rock,  and  is  crowned 
at  the  summit  with  snow,  about  eight  months  of  the  year.  , 

Now  the  climate  of  these  parallel  strips  will  be  different  almost  of 
course,  and  subordinate,  local  differences,  quite  as  remarkable,  will 
result  from  subordinate  features  in  the  local  configurations,  particularly 
of  the  seaward  strip  or  portion.  For  all  the  varieties  of  climate,  dis 
tinct  as  they  become,  are  made  by  variations  wrought  in  the  rates  of 
motion,  the  courses,  the  temperature,  and  the  dryness  of  a  single  wind, 
viz,  the  trade  wind  of  the  summer  months,  which  blows  directly  inward 
all  the  time,  only  with  much  greater  power  during  that  part  of  the  day 


**  '* 

ITS   CHARACTERISTICS   AND   PROSPECTS.  5 

when  the  rarefaction  of  the  great  central  valley  comes  to  its  aid  ;  that 
is  from  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  until  the  setting  of  the  sun.  Con 
ceive  such  a  wind,  chilled  by  the  cold  waters  which  have  come  down 
from  the  Northern  Pacific,  perhaps  from  Behring  Straits,  combing  the 
tops  and  wheeling  through  the  valleys  of  the  coast-wise  mountains, 
crossing  the  great  valley  at  a  much  retarded  rate,  and  growing  hot 
and  dry,  fanning  gently  the  foot-hills  and  sides  of  the  Sierra,  still  more 
retarded  by  the  piling  necessary  to  break  over  into  Utah,  and  the  con 
ditions  of  the  California  climate,  or  climates,  will  be  understood  with 
general  accuracy.  Greater  simplicity  in  the  matter  of  climate  is  im 
possible,  and  greater  variety  is  hardly  to  be  imagined. 

For  the  whole  dry  season,  viz,  from  May  to  November,  this  wind  is 
in  full  blast,  day  by  day,  only  sometimes  approaching  a  little  more 
nearly  to  a  tempest  than  at  others.  It  never  brings  a  drop  of  rain, 
however  thick  and  ram-like  the  clouds  it  sometimes  drives  before  it. 
The  cloud  element,  indeed,  is  always  in  it.  Sometimes  it  is  floated 
above,  in  the  manner  commonly  designated  by  the  term  cloud.  Some 
times,  as  in  the  early  morning,  when  the  wind  is  most  quiet,  it  may  be 
seen  as  a  kind  of  fog  bank  resting  on  the  sea-wall  mountains,  or  rolling 
clown  landward  through  the  interstices  of  their  summits.  When  the 
wind  begins  to  hurry  and  take  on  less  composedly,  the  fog  becomes 
blown  fog,  a  kind  of  lead  dust  driven  through  the  air,  reducing  it  from 
a  transparent  to  a  semi-transparent  or  merely  translucent  state,  so  that 
if  any  one  looks  up  the  bay,  from  a  point  twenty  or  thirty  miles  south 
of  San  Francisco,  in  the  afternoon,  he  will  commonly  see,  directly 
abreast  of  the  Golden  Gate,  where  the  wind  drives  in  with  its  greatest 
power,  a  pencil  of  the  lead  dust  shooting  upward  at  an  angle  of  thirty 
or  forty  degrees,  (which  is  the  aim  of  the  wind  preparing  to  leap  the 
second  chain  of  mountains,  the  other  side  of  the  bay,)  and  finally 
tapering  off  and  vanishing,  at  a  mid-air  point  eight  or  ten  miles  inland, 
where  the  increased  heat  of  the  atmosphere  has  taken  up  the  moisture, 
and  restored  its  complete  transparency.  The  wind  is  so  cold,  that  one 
who  will  sit  upon  the  deck  of  the  afternoon  steamer  passing  up  the 
Bay,  will  even  require  his  heaviest  winter  clothing.  And  so  rough  are 
the  waters  of  the  Bay,  land-locked  and  narrow  as  it  is,  that  sea-sick 
ness  is  a  kind  of  regular  experience,  with  such  as  are  candidates  for 
that  kind  of  felicity. 

We  return  now  to  the  middle  strip  of  the  great  valley,  where  the 
engine  or  rather  boiler  power,  that  operates  the  coast  wind  in  a  great 
part  of  its  velocity,  is  located.  Here  the  heat,  reverberated  as  in  a 
forge  or  oven,  whence  Call — -forma  (^Caleo and/Oman)  becomes,  even 
in  the  early  spring,  so  much  raised  that  the  ground  is  no  longer  able, 
by  any  remaining  cold  there  is  in  it,  to  condense  the  clouds,  and  rain 
ceases.  A  little  further  on  in  the  season,  there  is  not  cooling  influ 
ence  enough  left  to  allow  even  the  phenomena  of  a  cloud,  and  for 
weeks  together  not  a  cloud  will  be  seen,  unless,  by  chancejthe  skirt 


6  CALIFORNIA, 

of  one  may  appear  now  and  then,  hanging  over  the  summit  of  the 
western  mountains.  The  sun  rises,  fixing  his  hot  stare  on  the  world, 
and  stares  through  the  day.  Then  he  returns  as  in  an  orrery,  and 
stares  through  another,  in  exactly  the  same  way.  The  thermometer 
will  go  up,  not  seldom,  to  100  or  even  110  deg.,  and  judging  by  what 
we  know  of  effects  here  in  New  England,  we  should  suppose  that  life 
would  scarcely  be  supportable.  And  yet  there  is  much  less  suffering 
from  heat  in  this  valley  than  with  us,  for  the  reason  probably  that  the 
nights  are  uniformly  cool.  The  thermometer  goes  down  regularly  with 
the  sun,  and  one  or  two  blankets  are  wanted  for  the  comfort  of  the 
night.  This  cooling  of  the  night  is  probably  determined  by  the  fact 
that  the  cool  sea-wind,  sweeping  through  the  upper  air  of  the  valley, 
from  the  coast  mountains  on  one  side,  over  the  mountains  and  moun 
tain  passes  of  the  Sierra  on  the  other,  is  not  able  to  get  down  to 
the  ground  of  the  valley  during  the  day,  because  of  the  powerfully 
steaming  column  of  heat  that  rises  from  it ;  but  as  soon  as  the  sun  goes 
down,  it  drops  immediately  to  the  level  of  the  plain,  bathing  it  for  the 
night  with  a  kind  of  perpendicular  sea  breeze,  that  has  lost  for  the  time 
a  great  part  of  its  lateral  motion.  The  consequence  is,  that  no  one 
is  greatly  debilitated  by  the  heat.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  general 
testimony,  that  a  man  can  do  as  much  of  mental  or  bodily  labor  in  this 
climate,  as  in  any  other.  And  it  is  goo  1  confirmation  of  this  opinion, 
that  horses  will  here  maintain  a  wonderful  energy,  traveling  greater 
distances,  complaining  far  less  of  heat,  and  sustaining  their  spirit  a 
great  deal  better  than  with  us.  It  is  also  noted  that  there  is  no  spe 
cial  tendency  to  fevers  in  this  hot  region,  except  in  what  is  called  the 
tide  bottom,  a  kind  of  giant  bulrush  region,  along  the  most  depressed 
and  marshiest  portions  of  the  rivers. 

Passing  now  to  the  eastern  strip  or  portion,  the  slope  of  the  Nevada, 
the  heat,  except  in  those  deep  canons  where  the  reverberation  makes 
it  sometimes  even  insupportable,  is  qualified  in  degree,  according  to 
the  altitude.  A  gentle  west  wind,  heated  in  the  lower  part  of  the  foot 
hills  by  the  heat  of  the  valley,  fans  it  all  day.  At  points  which  are 
higher,  the  wind  is  cooler.  Here  also,  on  the  slope  of  the  Nevada, 
the  nights  are  always  cool  in  summer ;  so  cool  that  the  late  and  early 
frosts  leave  too  short  a  space  for  the  ordinary  summer  crop  to  mature, 
even  where  the  altitude  is  not  more  than  3,000  or  4,000  feet.  Mean 
time,  at  the  top  of  the  Sierra,  where  the  west  wind  piling  up  from  be 
low,  breaks  over  into  Utah,  travellers  undertake  to  say  that,  in  some 
passes  it  blows  with  such  stress  as  even  to  polish  the  rocks,  by  the 
gravel  and  sand  which  it  drives  before  it.  The  day  is  cloudless  on  the 
slope  of  the  Sierra,  as  in  the  valley,  but  on  the  top  there  is  now  and 
then,  or  once  in  a  year  or  two,  a  moderate  thunder  shower.  With 
this  exception,  as  referring  to  a  part  uninhabitable,  thunder  is  scarcely 
ever  heard  in  California.  The  principal  thunders  of  California  are 
under  ground. 


ITS   CHARACTERISTICS   AND   PROSPECTS.  7 

We  return  now  to  the  coast- wise  mountain  region,  where  the  multi 
plicity  and  confusion  of  climates  is  most  remarkable.  Their  variety 
we  shall  find  depends  on  the  courses  of  the  wind  currents,  turned  hith 
er  and  thither  by  the  mountains  ;  partly  also  on  the  side  any  given 
place  occupies  of  its  valley  or  mountain ;  and  partly  on  the  proximity 
of  the  sea.  Sprinkled  in  among  these  mountains,  and  more  or  less  en 
closed  by  them,  are  valleys,  large  and  small,  of  the  highest  beauty. 
But  a  valley  in  California  means  something  more  than  a  scoop,  or  de 
pression.  It  means  a  rich  land-lake,  leveled  between  the  mountains, 
with  a  sharply  defined,  picturesque  shore,  where  it  meets  the  sides 
and  runs  into  the  indentations  of  the  mountains.  What  is  called  the 
Bay  of  San  Francisco,  is  a  large  salt  water  lake  in  the  middle  of  a 
much  larger  land-lake,  sometimes  called  the  San  Jos6  valley.  It 
extends  south  of  the  city  forty  miles,  and  northward  among  islands  and 
mountains  twenty-five  more,  if  we  include  what  is  called  the  San  Pablo 
Bay.  Three  beautiful  valleys  of  agricultural  country,  the  Petaluma, 
Sonoma,  and  Napa  valleys,  open  into  this  larger  valley  of  the  Bay  on 
the  north  end  of  it,  between  four  mountain  barriers,  having  each  a 
short  navigable  creek  or  inlet.  Still  farther  north  is  the  Russian  River 
valley,  opening  towards  the  sea,  and  the  Clear  Lake  valley  and  region, 
which  is  the  Switzerland  of  California.  East  of  the  San  Jos6  valley, 
too,  at  the  foot  of  Diabolo,  and  up  among  the  mountains,  are  the  large 
Amador  and  San  Ramon  valleys,  also  the  little  gem  of  the  Sunole. 
Now  these  valleys,  which  if  we  except  the  great  valley  of  the  two  riv 
ers,  comprise  the  plow-land  of  middle  California,  have  each  a  climate 
of  their  own.  and  productions  that  correspond.  We  have  only  to  ob 
serve  further,  that  the  east  side  of  any  valley  will  commonly  be  much 
warmer  than  the  west ;  for  the  very  paradoxical  reason  that  the  cold 
coast-wind  always  blows  much  harder  on  the  side  or  steep  slope  even, 
of  a  mountain,  opposite  or  away  from  the  wind,  than  it  does  on  the 
side  towards  it,  reversing  all  our  notions  of  the  sheltering  effects  of 
mountain  ridges. 

Nothing  will  so  fatally  puzzle  a  stranger  as  the  observing  of  this 
fact ;  for  he  will  doubt  for  a  long  time,  first,  whether  it  be  a  fact,  and 
then,  what  possible  account  to  make  of  it.  Crossing  the  Golden  Gate 
in  a  small  steamer,  for  example,  to  Saucelito,  whence  the  water  is 
brought  for  the  city,  he  will  look  for  a  quiet  shelter  to  the  little  craft, 
apparently  in  danger  of  foundering,  when  it  comes  under  the  lee  of 
that  grand  mountain  wall  that  overhangs  the  water  on  the  west.  But 
he  is  surprised  when  he  arrives,  to  find  the  wind  blowing  straight 
down  the  face  of  it,  harder  even  than  elsewhere,  gouging  into  the  water 
by  a  visible  depression,  and  actually  raising  caps  of  white  within  a  rod 
of  the  shore.  In  San  Francisco  itself,  he  will  find  the  cold  coast- 
win:!  pouring  down  over  the  western  barrier  with  uncomfortable  rawness, 
when  returning  from  a  ride  at  Point  Lobos,  on  the  very  beach  of  the  sea, 
where  the  air  was  comparatively  soft  and  quiet.  So,  crossing  the 


8 

Sonoma  valley,  he  will  come  out  into  it  from  the  west,  through  a  cold 
windy  gorge,  to  find  orange  trees  growing  in  Gen.  Vallejo's  garden, 
close  under  the  eastern  valley  wall,  as  finely  as  in  Cuba.  In  multi 
tudes  of  places  too  on  the  eastern  slopes  of  the  mountains,  he  will 
notice  that  the  trees,  which  have  all  their  growth  in  the  coast-wind 
season,  have  their  tops  thrown  over,  like  cock's  tails  turned  away  from 
the  wind.  After  he  has  been  sufficiently  perplexed,  and  stumbled  by 
these  facts,  he  will  finally  strike  upon  the  reason,  viz,  that  this  cold, 
trade  wind,  being  once  lifted  or  driven  over  the  sea-wall  mountains, 
and  being  specifically  heavier  than  the  atmosphere  into  which  it  is 
going,  no  sooner  reaches  the  summit  than  it  pitches  down  as  a  cold 
cataract,  with  the  uniformly  accelerated  motion  of  falling  bodies. 
Then  as  confirmation,  it  will  occur  to  him,  perhaps,  that  he  has  been 
seeing  it  demonstrated  all  summer  long,  from  his  residence  on  the  op 
posite  or  eastern  side  of  the  Bay ;  where,  during  all  the  fore  part  of 
the  day,  and  sometimes  for  the  whole  afternoon,  he  has  noticed  a  fog 
cap,  or  cloud  rolling  over  the  distant  top  of  the  western  mountain,  and 
driving  more  than  half-way  down  the  hither  side  of  it,  before  it  has 
caught  sun  enough  or  heat  enough  to  become  transparent. 

Having  gotten  the  understanding  of  this  fact,  many  things  are  made 
plain.  For  example,  in  travelling  down  the  western  side  of  the  Bay 
from  San  Francisco  to  San  Jose',  and  passing  directly  under  the  moun 
tain  range  just  referred  to,  he  has  found  himself  passing  through  as 
many  as  four  or  five  distinct  climates ;  for,  when  abreast  of  some  gap 
or  depression  in  the  western  wall,  the  heavy  wind  has  poured  down 
with  a  chilling  coldness,  making  even  an  overcoat  desirable,  though  it 
be  a  clear,  summer  day ;  and  then,  when  he  is  abreast  of  some  high 
summit,  which  the  fog-wind  sweeps  by,  and  therefore  need  not  pass 
over,  a  sweltering  and  burning  heat  is  felt,  in  which  the  lightest  sum 
mer  clothing  is  more  than  enough.  He  has  also  observed  that  directly 
opposite  the  Golden  Gate,  at  Oakland,  and  the  Alameda  point,  where 
the  central  column  of  this  wind  might  be  supposed  to  press  most  un 
comfortably,  the  land  is  covered  with  growths  of  evergreem  oak,  stand 
ing  fresh  and  erect,  while  north  and  south,  on  either  side,  scarcely  a 
tree  is  to  be  seen  for  many  miles ;  a  mystery  that  is  now  explained  by 
the  fact  that  the  wind,  driving  here  square  against  the  Contra  Costa 
or  second  range,  is  piled  and  gets  no  current,  till  it  slides  off  north  and 
south  from  the  point  of  quiet  here  made  ;  which  also  is  confirmed  by 
the  fact,  that,  in  riding  down  from  San  Pablo  on  the  north,  he  has  the 
wind  in  his  face,  finds  it  slacken  as  he  approaches  Oakland,  and  pass 
ing  on,  till  southward  to  San  Leandro,  has  it  blowing  at  his  back. 

The  TOrieties,  and  even  what  appeared  to  be  the  incredible  anoma 
lies  of  the  California  climates,  begin  at  last  to  be  intelligible.  The 
remarkable  contrast,  for  example,  between  the  climates  of  Benicia  and 
Martinez,  is  clearly  accounted  for.  These  two  places,  only  a  mile  and 
a  half  apart,  on  opposite  sides  of  the  straits  of  Carquinez,  and  con- 


ITS    CHARACTERISTICS   AND   PROSPECTS.  9 

nected  by  a  ferry,  like  two  points  on  a  river,  are  yet  more  strikingly 
contrasted,  in  their  summer  climates,  than  Charleston  and  Quebec. 
Thus  the  Golden  Gate  column,  wheeling  upon  Oakland,  and  just  now 
described,  sweeps  along  the  face  of  the  Contra  Costa  chain  in  its  north 
ward  course,  setting  the  few  tree  tops  of  San  Pablo  aslant,  as  weather 
vanes  stuck  fast  by  rust,  and  drives  its  cold  sea-dust  full  in  the  face  of 
Benicia.  Meantime,  at  Martinez,  close  under  the  end  of  the  mountain 
which  has  turned  the  wind  directly  by,  and  is  itself  cloven  down  here 
to  let  the  straits  of  Carquinez  pass  through,  the  sun  shines  hot  and  with 
an  almost  dazzling  clearness,  and  all  the  characters  of  the  climate 
belong  rather  to  the  great  valley  cauldron,  whose  rim  it  may  be  said  is 
here. 

Equally  plain  now  is  the  solution  of  those  apparent  inversions  of  lat 
itude,  which  at  first  perplex  the  stranger.  In  the  region  about  Marys- 
ville,  for  example,  he  is  overtaken  by  a  fierce  sweltering  heat  in  April, 
and  scarcely  hears,  perhaps,  in  the  travel  of  a  day,  a  single  bird  sing 
as  if  meaning  it  for  a  song.  He  descends  by  steamer  to  San  Fran 
cisco,  and  thence  to  San  Jose,  making  a  distance  in  all  of  more  than 
two  hundred  miles,  where  he  finds  a  cool,  spring-like  freshness  in  the 
air,  and  hears  the  birds  screaming  with  song  even  more  vehement  than 
in  New  England.  It  is  as  if  he  had  passed  out  of  a  tropical  into  a 
temperate  climate,  when,  in  fact,  he  is  due  south  of  Marysville  by  the 
whole  distance  passed  over.  But  the  mystery  is  all  removed  by  the 
discovery,  that  instead  of  keeping  in  the  great  valley,  he  broke  out  of 
it  through  the  straits  of  Carquinez  into  the  Bay  valley,  and  the  cold 
bath  atmosphere  of  the  coast-wise  mountains ;  that  now  he  is  in  fact 
within  twenty  miles  of  the  sea,  separated  from  it  only  by  a  single  wall, 
while  at  Marysville,  he  was  more  than  a  hundred  miles  from  the  sea, 
with  four  or  five  high  mountain  tiers  between  them. 

Thus  much  for  the  summer  climate  of  California.  The  winter  cli 
mate  is  the  trade  wind  reversed.  The  Sierra  is  covered  with  snows  of 
incredible  depth  at  the  top,  and  they  extend  even  down  to  its  foot, 
whitening  also,  not  seldom,  the  great  valley,  which  is  much  colder,  at 
this  season,  than  the  coast-mountain  region.  Temperature,  in  short,  is 
inverted,  just  as  the  winds  are.  The  temperature  in  San  Francisco, 
for  example,  ranges  generally  between  60  and  70  deg.,  as  in  the  sum 
mer  between  65  and  80  deg. ;  though  the  cold  of  experience  will  be 
scarcely  greater  in  the  winter  than  in  the  summer,  because /in  winter 
the  air  is  comparatively  still,  and  in  summer  adds  a  cooling  effect  by 
its  motion.  Probably  there  is  not  a  more  even  climate  in  the  world. 
Now  and  then  the  thermometer  will  sink  low  enough,  at  night,  to  pro 
duce  a  thin  scale  of  ice  ;  but  geraniums  will  be  seen  in  full  blossom,  on 
the  terraces  of  the  gardens,  throughout  the  winter. 

^  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  this  westward  return  of  the  trade 
winds  brings  the  rainy  season.  All  the  rain  of  the  year  is  from  it. 
It  sometimes  blows  too  with  terrific  violence,  and  pours  even  cascades 


10  CALIFORNIA, 

of  rain  for  whole  days  together,  producing  immense  floods  ;  though 
generally  the  whole  amount  of  rain  which  it  brings  is  much  too  small 
for  the  supply  of  the  springs  and  due  moistening  of  the  soil  for  the 
year.  It  is  not  to  be  understood  that  what  is  called  the  rainy  season 
is  a  season  of  continual  rain.  It  is  scarcely  more  rainy,  if  at  all,  than 
our  three  autumnal  months.  And  at  about  the  mid-point  of  the  sea 
son,  or  in  the  month  of  February,  there  is  commonly  a  suspension, 
which  separates  what  may  be  called  the  early  from  the  latter  rain,  as 
in  Palestine.  This  month  of  February  is,  in  fact,  the  most  lovely,  and 
in  many  respects,  the  most  beautiful  month  of  the  year.  The  green 
of  the  landscape  is  then  freshest,  the  air  is  soft,  the  sky  clear,  the 
roads  neither  wet  nor  dusty — all  the  conditions  of  comfort  and  beauty 
meet,  to  crown  it  as  the  June  of  the  Pacific. 

If  now  it  should  appear  that  we  have  spent  too  much  time  on  the 
winds  and  meteorological  phenomena  of  California,  it  is  sufficient  to 
answer,  that  while  such  an  impression  would  be  right  if  New  England 
were  the  subject,  it  is  not  right  when  the  subject  is  California.  The 
winds  of  our  eastern  shore  are  a  confused  mixture,  of  which  nothing 
can  be  predicated  with  certainty,  except  the  uncertainty  of  the 
weather.  The  Pacific  winds,  on  the  other  hand,  are  very  nearly  cal 
culable  quantities  ;  and  by  them  are  determined,  to  a  great  degree, 
the  temperature  of  places,  the  rains,  the  seasons,  the  almost  uniform 
salubrity  of  the  country,  (for  with  all  its  varieties  there  is  probably 
no  healthier  region  on  the  globe,)  the  growths  also,  as  respects  both 
their  rates  and  kinds,  and  further  still,  the  immense  commercial  ad 
vantages  ;  for  California,  as  we  shall  by  and  by  see,  is  elected  for  the 
great  metropolitan  centre  of  the  commerce  of  the  Pacific,  quite  as 
much  by  its  winds,  as  by  the  magnificent  harbor,  whose  Gate  is  here 
set  open  to  let  the  ships  fly  in,  as  doves  to  their  windows,  from  all  the 
seas  of  the  world.  The  gold  of  California,  taken  as  a  determining 
cause  and  physical  endowment  of  its  future,  is  not  once  t6  be  com 
pared  with  its  winds.  They  are  more  necessary,  by  a  thousand  times, 
to  the  greatness  of  California  than  the  mines.  If  any  one  judges 
from  our  description,  that  they  are  too  cold,  or  too  strong,  or  too  much 
laden  with  moisture,  he  will  greatly  mistake.  If  they  were  warmer, 
softer  and  more  dry  on  the  coast,  even  by  a  few  degrees,  it  would 
greatly  injure  the  country  and  might  even  be  a  fatal  blight  on  its 
prospects.  Indeed,  if  California  has  any  prospects,  it  is  just  because 
the  light  baffling  winds,  or  rather  no  winds  of  the  coast  below,  are 
here  displaced  by  such  blasts  as  have  power  to  drive  across  its  whole 
width  and  fan  it  with  their  cooling  breath.  Otherwise  its  rich  valleys 
and  lowlands  would  be  arid  deserts,  its  shores  and  rivers  reeking 
places  of  disease,  and  even  in  its  mining  region  too  hot  to  be  worked 
or  even  inhabited,  in  the  summer  months. 

Having  gotten  our  advantage  therefore,  in  a  due  understanding  of 
the  winds  and  climate  of  California,  our  description  may  now  proceed 


ITS   CHARACTERISTICS   AND    PROSPECTS.  11 

more  rapidly.  The  scenery  of  California  depends  partly  on  the  sur 
faces  and  partly  on  the  seasons.  It  differs  from  our  eastern  shore,  in 
the  fact  that  it  is  made  up  of  concave  or  scooped  surfaces,  flowing  into 
convex  summits  or  rounded  surfaces  only  to  a  very  limited  extent ; 
all  the  valleys  being  plains,  or  land-lakes,  with  definite  indented  shores, 
like  shores  of  water.  It  differs  also  from  the  western  prairies  and  the 
plains  of  the  south,  where  the  horizon  is  sunk  and  the  sky  becomes  a 
small  inverted  bowl,  in  the  fact  that  every  spot,  even  in  the  widest  of 
the  valleys,  has  a  mountain  wall  and  horizon  visible  in  the  distance, 
which  props  the  sky  and  lifts  the  vault  of  it,  giving  a  look  of  airiness 
and  expansion,  and  connecting  impressions  even  of  grandeur  and 
beauty.  Mountain  and  plain,  plain  and  mountain,  stretching  generally 
coastwise  in  their  figure,  make  up  the  rough  calico  of  the  surface. 
Sometimes  the  mountains  are  bare,  or  nearly  so,  showing  a  mottled 
look  in  the  distance,  where  the  sun,  glancing  down  their  sides,  bur 
nishes  the  points  and  casts  a  shade  on  the  hollows.  Here  the  cattle 
on  a  thousand  hills  are  no  figure  ;  for  the  hills  are  pastures,  covered 
many  of  them  with  a  rich  growth  of  grass  and  wild  oats  even  to  the 
top,  and  the  cattle  paths,  beaten  like  shelf  rows  in  their  steep  sides, 
just  save  them  apparently  from  sliding  off  into  the  abysses,  making 
every  rod  of  pasture  accessible  and  permitting  them  finally  to  emerge, 
as  the  triumph  of  their  engineering  instinct,  on  summits  two  thousand, 
or  even  three  thousand  feet  high,  where  they  are  seen  from  below  in 
clean  relief  of  the  sky.  Sometimes  again  the  montain  sides  are  cov 
ered  with  a  dense  chapparal,  appearing  in  the  distance  just  as  they 
would  if  darkened  by  a  forest ;  save  that,  now  and  then,  the  chappa 
ral  is  of  a  most  intense,  transparently  green  color,  showing  a  summit 
that  emerges  into  the  sun,  when  surrounded  by  the  driving  clouds 
below,  like  a  huge  pile  of  emerald.  Sometimes  the  distant  summits 
are  seen  to  be  covered  with  a  growth  of  redwoods,  that  stand  posted 
there  as  giant  sentinels,  every  trunk  distinctly  visible,  and  altogether, 
two  hundred  or  three  hundred  feet  high,  combing  the  sky  in  dark 
relief  upon  it,  giving  to  the  horizon  thus  a  most  peculiar  look  of  spirit 
and  majesty.  The  lower  half  of  the  Sierra  Nevada,  comprising  the 
foot  hills  and  the  whole  mining  region,  is  covered  extensively  with  a 
timber  growth  of  pines,  cedars  and  other  evergreens.  The  upper  half 
is  bald,  ragged  granite,  the  highest  peaks  of  which  are  covered  a  great 
part  of  the  year  with  snow.  All  the  mountains  differ  from  those  of 
the  east,  in  the  fact  that  they  are  seamed  or  furrowed  from  the  tops 
downwards,  every  few  rods,  by  a  ravine  or  water  course.  These 
ravines  are  many  of  them  dry  in  the  summer,  though  generally,  or  at 
least  frequently,  displaying  a  green  line  of  shrubbery  and  trees  in 
their  course,  which  makes  them  very  conspicuous  from  a  distance ; 
especially  when  the  mountains  are  bare  on  their  general  surface. 
These  ravines,  too,  are  often  cut  miles  deep  into  the  hills,  becoming 
immense  chasms,  canons  or  gorges,  out  of  which  all  the  earth  has 


12 

been  swept,  to  fill  the  rich  valley  bottom  and  make  up  the  land-lake 
deposit  of  the  plain.  All  the  mountains  accordingly  are  flanked  by 
spurs  with  intervening  gorges,  and  these  again  by  spurs,  and  these 
again  by  the  same  ;  so  that,  standing  on  the  side  of  some  grand  am 
phitheater,  the  spectator  may  sometimes  see  that  he  is  on  the  spur  of 
a  spur  even  in  the  fifth  degree  ;  all  of  which  spurs  run  together,  like 
pig  iron  castings  in  a  furnace,  only  with  a  more  disorderly  complica 
tion.  Hence,  too,  the  impossibility  in  California,  as  we  may  here  re 
mark  in  passing,  that  any  railroad  should  ever  get  over  a  mountain, 
as  with  us,  by  skirting  along  its  sides  till  it  has  made  the  ascent ;  for 
such  a  line  would  be  cut  by  the  side  canons,  or  gorges,  from  a  hun 
dred  to  a  thousand  or  even  two  thousand  feet  deep,  every  half  mile. 
There  is  no  way  but  to  follow  up  the  bottom  of  some  great  canon,  or 
river  gdfge,  until  it  becomes  too  steep,  and  escape  by  a  tunnel ;  or 
else  to  find  some  spur  whose  back  can  be  ascended,  and  keep  it  to  the 
top. 

From  these  general  descriptions  of  the  surface  it  will  be  naturally 
inferred  that  there  is  a  great  deal,  both  of  beautiful  and  of  grand 
scenery,  in  California.  Few  countries  are  richer  in  their  varieties, 
and  none  more  peculiar  in  all.  Here  sleeps  in  quiet,  earthly  beauty 
the  rich  vale  of  Sonoma,  backed  in  rough  grandeur  by  the  towering 
Diabolo,  a  picture  in  a  frame.  Here  in  the  deep  chasm  or  angle  that 
fcots  the  Yo  Harnite  Falls,  a  river  is  beheld  pitching  off  a  summit 
twenty-four  hundred  feet  high,  and  by  two  leaps,  reaching  the  bottom  ; 
type,  as  it  were,  of  heaven's  mercy  pouring  from  the  sky.  Here  on 
the  other  hand,  at  the  Geysers,  in  the  cracking,  cannonading,  whist 
ling  and  roaring  of  steam,  and  spouting  of  hot  mud,  and  the  brimstone 
fumes  of  the  place,  we  look  on  a  field,,  under  which  we  may  well 
enough  imagine  the  infernals,  sweltering  and  tearing,  as  it  were,  dia 
bolically,  to  break  loose.  At  the  Big  Trees,  we  enter  a  dell  quietly 
lapped  in  the  mountains,  where  the  domestic  vegetable  minarets  are 
crowded,  as  in  some  city  of  pilgrimage  ;  there  to  look  up,  for  the  first 
time,  in  silent  awe  of  the  mere  life  principle. 

The  scene  of  the  city  and  bay,  from  the  high  background  of  the 
city,  is  one  that  any  lover  of  nature  might  travel  far  to  see.  The 
same  reversed,  from  the  east  side  of  the  bay,  at  Clinton,  is  more 
remarkable.  In  the  unalterable  green  foreground,  are  the  oaks  of 
Oakland  and  Alameda ;  here  and  there  flows  a  strip  or  armlet  of 
water;  next  comes  the  Bay,  in  the  middle,  with  its  picturesque 
islands ;  beyond  are  the  City,  and  the  open  Gate,  showing  the  Farra- 
lone  Islands  far  off  to  sea ;  right  and  left  each  side  of  the  Gate,  the 
grand  sea-wall  of  mountains  stretches  north  and  south,  for  a  back 
ground,  at  least  fifty  miles — it  is  not  the  bay  o£  Naples,  the  dreamy 
softness  and  quiet  luxury  are  not  here — but  with  more  severity,  the 
scene  unites  a  higher  spirit  and  beauty  as  much  more  impressive  and 
brilliant.  The  Gate  itself,  cleaving  down  the  mountains  to  let  the 


ITS   CHARACTERISTICS   AND   PROSPECTS.  13 

commerce  of  the  Great  Ocean  of  the  world  pass  in,  has  a  look  of 
destiny  in  it  strong  enough  to  be  sublime. 

There  is  a  little  valley  owned  by  a  wealthy  and  respectable  Spanish 
Californian,  Mr.  Sunole,  which  is  commonly  called  by  his  name,  and 
is  occupied  as  a  pasture  ground  or  ranch  for  his  herds.  It  lies  over 
among  the  Contra  Costa,  or  second  range  of  mountains  east  of  Mission 
San  Jose,  and  is  entered  by  a  pass  some  four  hundred  feet  above  the 
valley  bottom,  which  comprises  about  a  thousand  acres.  Through  this 
valley  bottom  runs  a  clear,  rapid  stream,  which  in  the  spring  would 
be  called  a  river,  and  which,  wheeling  round  to  the  northwest,  cuts 
the  mountain  to  its  base,  dashing  through  one  of  the  wildest  gorges 
that  can  be  conceived,  fifteen  hundred  feet  deep,  and  hurrying  off  into 
the  Bay.  On  the  north  rises  a  huge  bare  summit  two  thousand  feet 
high.  On  the  southwest  the  Mission  Peak,  twenty-five  hundred  feet 
high.  On  the  southwest,  across  the  narrow  wooded  gorge  through 
which  the  river  breaks  into  the  valley,  other  fantastic  peaks  three 
thousand  feet  high.  On  the  east  the  enclosure  is  made  by  a  low, 
steep  range  of  naked  hills  showing  others  higher  and  still  higher  be 
hind  them.  A  stranger,  fresh  arrived  in  May,  at  the  Mission,  takes 
his  horse,  for  example,  the  next  morning,  and  finding  a  road  that  turns 
into  the  narrow  gorge  or  opening  of  the  hills  near  by,  goes  in  to  ex 
plore  a  little  and  find  whither  it  leads.  The  steep,  smooth-faced  hills, 
or  rather  mountains,  pile  in  with  rounding  fronts  on  either  side,  just 
leaving  a  passage  between  ;  and  they  are  so  lighted  up  by  the  sun 
brushing  down  their  translucent  surfaces  of  green,  and  tuned  to  such 
wild  harmony  by  their  many-colored  flowers,  that  sight  overflows,  and 
he  begins  unwittingly  to  listen  ;  as  if  there  must  be  something  audible, 
some  hymn  or  note  of  Memnon  in  the  scene.  Passing  a  low  summit, 
the  beautiful  valley  opens  to  view,  and  such  a  combination  of  colors 
no  eastern  man  or  European  has  ever  seen  or  conceived.  The  green 
is  not  what  we  call  a  grass  green.  Neither  is  it  the  pale  bluish  green 
of  England,  but  a  soft  yellow  green,  covering  the  whole  landscape — the 
steeps  even  to  the  summits,  all  the  roundings  and  hollows,  as  well  as 
a  rich  floor  of  the  valley  bottom  —  like  an  immense  carpet  of  plush 
spread  over  the  scene  ;  which  carpet  is  so  matted  with  flowers  in  all 
the  highest  colors,  sprinkled  sometimes  in  groups,  that  we  call  it  by 
this  name  without  any  effort  of  fancy  —  we  can  think  of  nothing  else. 
No  painter,  practised  in  our  common  styles  of  scenery,  could  manage 
at  such  a  picture,  without  much  study,  assisted  probably  by  many 
failures. 

Descending  next  into  the  valley,  he  finishes  out  the  picturesque  of 
the  morning,  in  looking  on  a  scene  quite  as  new  and  peculiar  as  the 
scenery.  In  the  extreme  southern  angle  of  the  plain,  just  where  the 
river  issues  from  the  gorge  of  the  mountains,  he  observes  a  cloud  of 
dust  rising,  and  horsemen  rushing  wildly  through  it  in  all  directions. 
Something  brisk  is  evidently  going  on  here,  and  he  must  needs  leran 


14  CALIFORNIA, 

what  it  is.  Approaching  the  spot  he  discovers  an  immense  herd  of 
cattle  brought  together  from  the  hills,  which  the  owners  and  their 
herdsmen  are  either  sorting  by  their  marks,  or  which  else  they  are 
sorting  out,  in  sale  of  a  part,  for  the  market  —  they  are  Spanish,  na 
tive  Californians  all,  and  do  not  answer  English  questions.  This  at 
least  is  plain,  that  they  are  gathering  out  of  the  great  herd  of  a 
thousand  or  more,  to  make  up  another  and  separate  herd  a  short  dis 
tance  off,  and  the  lasso  practice  is  the  power.  Riding  into  the  herd 
and  through  it,  they  chase  out  one,  turning  him  towards  the  new  herd. 
But  he  runs  by,  and  back  into  the  herd,  or  he  strikes  out  into  the 
plain,  in  some  other  direetion.  But  the  pursuer  is  after  him.  Round 
and  round  swings  the  fatal  loop  or  noose  above  his  head  as  he  goes, 
till  he  gets  in  reach,  at  three  or  four  rods  distance,  when  he  lets  it 
fly,  and  it  drops  with  a  kind  of  astronomic  certainty  round  the  poor 
animal's  horns.  Feeling  it  fast  upon  him,  the  animal  now  turns  upon 
his  persecutor,  and  it  is  convenient  for  him  also  to  fly  in  his  turn  — 
only  keeping  the  cord  still  fast  to  the  horn  of  his  saddle.  Another 
horseman  follows  immediately,  and  another  lasso  drops  and  is  drawn 
fast.  Now  the  animal,  in  a  line  between  the  two  pursuers,  strikes  off, 
throwing  his  whole  momentum,  if  he  can,  upon  the  straight  line,  at 
right  angles  to  it,  which  gives  him  advantage  enough  to  unhorse  both 
of  them,  if  they  let  him  come  to  the  blow.  All  three,  therefore,  now 
are  in  a  race  together,  and  as  soon  as  this  is  seen,  a  third  horseman  is 
in  pursuit,  and  throwing  his  lasso,  he  picks  up  a  hind  leg  of  the  ox  as 
he  runs,  doing  it  as  easily  as  a  knitter  might  take  up  a  fallen  stitch. 
This  done,  while  the  two  others  are  spreading  right  and  left,  he  darts 
off  sideways  at  a  prick  of  the  spur,  and  jerks  the  refractory  beast  flat 
upon  the  ground  ;  where  he  lies  bellowing  in  fright  and  despair,  held 
fast  by  three  cords,  at  three  angles,  as  little  able  to  escape  as  a  fly  in 
a  spider's  web.  Next  a  huge,  fiery  bull  is  seen  rushing  out  of  the 
herd,  pursued  by  a  small,  sharp  looking  herdsman,  who  says,  by  a  cer 
tain  look  of  his  eye,  that  he  will  show  the  green  stranger  a  trick. 
Bolting  into  the  plain,  the  mettlesome,  tall  animal,  leads  off  in  a  race 
which  puts  the  horse  to  his  best  speed.  But  as  the  pursuer  comes 
up  with  him,  he  seizes  the  tail  of  the  renegade,  streaming  level  behind 
him,  winds  it  by  a  quick  turn  round  the  horn  of  his  saddle,  and  dart 
ing  off  suddenly  by  a  spring,  as  if  it  were  done  by  some  concussion  of 
gunpowder,  he  jerks  the  bull  flat  down  and  rolls  him  clean  over ! 
Whereupon  there  is  a  shout  from  all  —  but  the  bull ;  who  gets  up,  as 
it  were,  in  an  effort  of  self-recollection,  and  walks  off  meekly  where 
they  show  him  the  way. 

We  only  add,  as  regards  the  scenery  in  California,  that  everything 
is  here  inverted  which  we  commonly  assume  in  respect  to  the  effects 
of  culture.  Culture  improves  nothing.  California  was  finished  as  a 
world  of  beauty,  before  civilization  appeared.  The  magnificent  val 
leys  opened  wide  ai*d  clean.  The  scattered  oaks  stood  in  majesty, 


ITS   CHARACTERISTICS   AND   PROSPECTS.  15 

here  and  there,  and  took  away  the  nakedness.  Civilization  comes, 
cuts  down  the  oaks  for  firewood,  fences  off  the  plains  into  squares, 
covers  them  with  grain  or  stubble,  scatters  wild  mustard  over  them, 
it  may  be,  and  converts  them  into  a  weedy  desolation.  The  only  at 
tractive  looking  surface  ever  to  be  seen  in  California,  is  the  native 
original  surface ;  for  there  is  never  to  be  a  lawn,  or  a  neat  grassy 
slope,  as  with  us,  because  there  is  no  proper  turf.  Shrubbery  itself 
can  never  be  made  ornamental  in  California,  except  where  there  is 
irrigation  to  maintain  it.  Where  there  is  irrigation,  a  gardener  house 
lot  may  be  covered  in  with  trees  and  set  off  with  flowers,  so  as  to  be 
really  fresh  in  beauty  at  all  times  ;  but  this  is  not  the  kind  of  beauty 
that  makes  a  landscape.  In  the  mining  country,  the  natural  beauty 
of  the  scenery  is  defaced  by  another  process.  Here  a  thin  but  stately 
growth  of  evergreens  is  sprinkled  over  the  generally  graceful  slopes 
and  rounds  of  the  hills,  and  a  pure  crystal  leaps  along  down  the 
trough  of  the  hills,  over  cliifs  of  rock  and  pebbly  beds.  But  the 
miner  comes.  Finding  gold  that  will  "  pay  "  in  the  soil,  he  rents  a 
head  of  water  from  the  ditch  company,  whose  ditch  bringing  on  the 
water  from  some  level  far  up  in  the  Sierra,  flows  it  along  from  hill  top 
down  to  hill  top,  and  across  from  one  hill  to  another,  leaping  hollows 
and  ravines  on  wooden  tressel-work,  sometimes  even  two  hundred  feet 
high,  till  it  reaches  a  point  abreast  of  his  placer,  and  directly  above 
it.  Bringing  it  down  the  hill  in  immense  cotton  hose,  with  a  nozzle 
pipe  like  that  of  a  fire  engine,  he  plays  it  into  the  side  of  the  hill, 
with  a  pressure  perhaps  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  fall ;  tears  down 
the  hill,  acre  by  acre,  and  floats  it  off,  rolling  the  loose  stones  with  it 
down  his  wooden  trunk  or  sluice,  in  which  the  gold  is  arrested,  and  so 
continues,  till  he  has  carried  off  a  large  section  of  the  hill-side,  even  a 
hundred  feet  deep.  His  neighbors  are  doing  the  same  thing  right  and 
left.  Pits  are  also  sunk  downward,  and  tunnels  bored  in  level  into 
the  sides  of  the  hills,  and  the  earth  from  so  many  burrows,  is  piled  at 
their  mouths. 

The  trees  are  cut  down  for  timber  and  firewood.  The  stream  of 
the  valley  runs  thick  with  creamy  richness,  and  the  cliffs  and  pebbly 
beds  are  covered  fifty  feet  deep  with  stones  and  mudwashings.  The 
result  is  a  most  horrid  desolation,  of  which  every  line  of  the  natural 
beauty  is  gone  forever.  If  some  camp  of  demons  had  been  pitched 
here  for  a  year,  tearing  the  earth  by  their  fury,  and  converting  it  to 
the  model  of  their  own  bad  thought,  they  could  hardly  make  it  look 
worse.  The  whole  mining  region  is  finally  to  become  a  desolation  in 
just  this  manner.  There  is  no  possibility  of  a  process  more  delicate 
for  extracting  the  gold.  Indeed  there  seems  to  be  a  kind  of  prior 
necessity,  which  nature  must  needs  recognize,  that  gold  and  desola 
tion  go  together.  What  we  see  then,  at  the  mines,  only  represents 
too  faithfully  what  holds  good  historically  in  the  moral  desolations  of 
plunder,  fraud,  and  avarice,  instigated  by  this  treasure  of  the  moun- 


16  CALIFORNIA, 

tains.  The  only  part  of  California,  in  short,  that  will  not  be  damaged 
in  its  scenery  by  the  arrival  of  culture,  is  the  broken  country  of  the 
coast  region,  or  the  region  of  natural  pasturage  ;  except  that  possibly 
the  artesian  wells  may  be  carried  so  far  as  to  irrigate  a  considerable 
part  of  the  valley  surfaces.  Thus  while  there  is  almost  no  stream 
running  through  a  valley  bottom  in  the  summer,  because  every  issue 
from  the  mountains  sinks  immediately  into  the  gravel  beds  of  the 
plains,  and  runs  under,  it  may  turn  out  generally,  in  the  narrow  val 
leys,  as  in  that  of  San  Jose*,  that  artesian  wells,  sunk  two  hundred  or 
three  hundred  feet,  will  bring  it  up,  spouting  into  liberty  on  the  sur 
face.  Two  or  three  of  the  wells  in  this  town  throw  a  column  nine 
inches  in  diameter,  ten  or  fifteen  feet  high,  discharging  water  enough 
to  turn  a  mill,  and  of  course  to  irrigate  a  large  surface. 

It  will  doubtless  occur  to  many,  that  the  dry  season  of  the  year, 
which  is  the  summer,  must  be  a  season  of  utter  desolation  as  regards 
the  scenery.  What  can  be  more  desolate  than  a  universal  dry  death  ? 
And  if  the  water-runs,  or  ravines,  are  green ;  if  the  chapparal  on  some 
of  the  mountains,  and  occasionally  trees  in  the  plains,  that  have  the 
faculty  to  bore  deep  for  their  water,  show  a  semblance  of  life  ;  if  the 
gardens  which  are  irrigated  show  a  patch  of  luxuriance  here  and 
there,  like  an  oasis  in  the  yellow  desert,  what  after  all  is  the  landscape 
but  a  desert  ?  Suppose  then  it  were  to  be  covered  with  snows  two  or 
three  feet  deep,  and  every  solitary  thing  stripped  of  its  green,  would 
the  scenery  be  less  desolate  ?  But  this  is  our  winter.  The  wintry, 
or  suspension  time  of  California  is  in  the  summer,  and  the  winter 
months  of  the  almanac  are  dressed  in  the  richest,  freshest  green. 
And  yet  the  Californians  speak  of  beautiful  scenery  in  the  summer, 
and  any  one  who  has  been  there  a  few  months  begins  to  sympathize 
with  them.  Trees  and  chapparal  are  stronger  marks  on  the  landscape 
than  with  us  ;  green  spots,  such  as  watered  fields  and  gardens,  have  a 
fascinating  freshness.  And  even  the  dry  surfaces,  in  certain  lights, 
make  a  picture,  by  aid  of  the  shadows  on  the  hollow  surfaces,  and  the 
occasional  green  of  trees  and  chapparal  and  gardens,  that  is  really 
beautiful.  The  little  valley  just  described,  for  example,  puts  off  its 
green  and  puts  on  a  dress  of  drab,  velvety  and  soft  in  the  glancing 
strokes  of  light,  and  becomes  for  all  the  world  a  neat  Quarker  bonnet ; 
only  that  the  deep  blue  green  of  the  gorges,  and  the  lively  green 
ribands  that  hang  down  the  water  courses  are  a  little  too  dressy  and 
fantastic,  and  suggest  a  case  of  sumptuary  discipline.  The  most  that 
can  be  said  of  the  Pacific  hybernation  time  is,  that  while  our  winter  is 
absolute,  unconquerable  desolation,  the  Californiari  can  go  into  his  gar 
den,  turn  on  the  water,  make  an  outdoor  green-house  of  it,  filled  with 
all  richest  fruits  and  singing  birds,  and  there  wait  patiently  till  the 
months  of  green  return. 

The  growths  of  California  are  as  peculiar  as  their  climate.  To 
make  this  subject  intelligible,  let  it  be  understood  that  where  there  is 


—r  V|K"  ^^  r  "S 

OF  TH* 

I  UNIVERSITY 


ITS   CHARACTERISTICS   AND   PROSPECTS.  17 

no  irrigation,  natural  or  artificial,  nothing  grows  perennially  in  Califor 
nia,  except  trees  that  have  a  tap  root,  and  shrubs  and  grasses  that 
have  some  peculiar  kind  of  root  that  enables  them  to  get  sufficient 
moisture,  where  only  a  little  is  given.  There  is  a  coarse  perennial 
grass,  for  example,  that  is  found,  when  dug,  to  grow  out  of  perpendic 
ular  rootlets  eight  or  ten  inches  long,  which  themselves  grow  out  of 
large  horizontal  roots,  that  serve  as  water  cisterns  or  sponges  for  the 
uses  overhead.  None  of  the  common  upland,  or  hay  grasses,  live 
through  the  summer,  and  therefore  none  make  what  can  be  called  a 
turf.  The  grasses  of  every  season  are  started  in  November,  from  the 
ripe  seeds  dropped  into  the  chinks  of  the  ground,  in  the  dry  season 
previous.  It  results  accordingly,  that  no  crop  can  be  raised  in  Cali 
fornia  which  does  not  ripen  before  the  dry  season  commences,  or  by 
about  the  first  of  June.  The  only  exceptions  possible  to  this  are 
made  by  irrigation,  either  where  water  is  artificially  supplied,  or 
where,  as  will  sometimes  be  the  case,  there  is  a  supply  from  stores,  or 
filterings  underneath.  It  is  only  under  these  conditions  that  a  crop 
of  Indian  corn  or  potatoes  can  be  raised ;  though  an  early  crop  of 
potatoes,  ripening  in  June  or  July,  can  be  raised  anywhere ;  and 
where  the  ground  is  sufficiently  moistened  from  below,  two  crops  a 
year  are  frequently  grown  upon  the  same  soil.  Potatoes  of  the  late 
crop  are  grown  too  in  some  places  near  the  coast,  where  they  get 
moisture  enough  from  the  atmosphere  and  the  fog,  to  answer  their 
purpose.  A  summer  garden  will  commonly  make  but  a  poor  figure, 
unless  it  is  recruited  by  supplies  of  water  not  contained  in  the  natural 
soil  of  the  place.  The  dry  season  is,  in  fact,  the  wintering  season  of 
vegetation,  though  it  is  the  summer.  Whatever  lives,  hybernates, 
rests.  The  strawberry,  for  example,  ripens  its  fruit  in  April,  has  its 
growth,  ceases,  begins  to  look  rusty,  and  passes  into  the  state  of  sus 
pension,  finally  to  die.  Let  on  now  a  flow  of  water,  and  it  wakes, 
blossoms  again,  bears  another  crop,  and  passes  into  another  suspen 
sion,  and  then  is  ready  to  be  wakened  and  bear  a  third  crop.  And  so 
by  alternating  in  times  with  different  beds,  a  succession  is  kept  up, 
and  a  bountiful  supply  is  obtained  from  April  to  November. 

The  principle  growths  or  products  of  California  are,  accordingly, 
the  fruits  and  the  cereals.  Most  of  the  fruits  really  want  irrigation, 
though  there  are  many  tracts  of  soil  in  which  they  will  flourish  with 
out,  and  will  not  ripen  prematurely.  The  fruits  are  grapes,  figs, 
olives,  pomegranates,  almonds,  plums,  apricots,  pears,  peaches  and 
apples.  Finer  grapes  are  grown  nowhere  in  the  world.  The  apples 
are  large  and  fair,  and  wonderfully  precocious  in  bearing,  but  there  is 
reason  to  suspect,  from  experiments  made  in  the  old  mission  gardens, 
that  they  may  be  short  lived.  Peaches,  plums,  and  pears  bear  only 
too  profusely.  Indeed,  there  is  a  wonderous  tendency  to  fructification 
in  every  kind  of  growth,  animal  and  vegetable.  As  yet,  the  fruits 
sell  at  enormous  prices,  because  of  the  shortness  of  supply.  In  a 
2 


18  CALIFORNIA, 

very  few  years  they  will  be  plenty  and  cheap.  And  even  now  there 
is  no  city  on  the  earth,  where  the  fruit  shops  make  as  fine  a  show  as 
in  San  Francisco.  Considering  the  size,  the  fairness,  the  varieties, 
and  all  that  goes  to  make  a  show  of  richness  and  profusion,  there  is 
probably  nothing  in  the  world  to  match  the  displays  of  fruit  in  this 
new  city  of  the  Pacific. 

But  the  great  agricultural  crops  of  California  are  the  cereals,  wheat, 
and  barley,  and  oats.  These  are  sown  at  any  time,  when  it  'is  both 
wet  enough  and  dry  enough  to  plow,  between  November  and  March ; 
harvested  any  time  between  the  ripening  of  June  and  the  rain-falls  of 
November ;  for  they  will  stand  uninjured,  or  lie,  as  left  by  the  reaper, 
and  without  shelling,  all  that  time ;  so  that  a  small  force  suffices 
both  to  raise  and  to  harvest  a  large  crop.  And  the  yield  is 
from  twenty  to  sixty  bushels  of  wheat  to  the  acre,  subject  to  no  con 
tingencies  but  wet  and  premature  drought,  which  latter  only  shortens 
the  crop.  Even  one  hundred  and  forty  bushels  of  barley  have  been 
harvested  on  a  single  acre.  Oats  are  said  to  degenerate  in  the  seed 
ing,  but  we  have  seen  the  stalk  even  twelve  feet  high.  These  crops 
again,  will  sow  themselves  for  a  second  crop  the  next  year,  and  that 
will  yield  more  than  any  crop  sown  in  the  Western  or  Atlantic  States. 
Sixty  or  eighty  bushels  have  been  gathered  from  the  volunteer  crop  of 
barley.  This,  in  fact,  is  one  of  the  evils  to  be  encountered  by  Cali 
fornia  agriculture,  that  every  crop  perpetuates  itself  as  a  weed  ;  so 
that  no  good  wheat  crop,  for  example,  can  be  raised  on  a  field  once 
sown  with  barley,  till  the  barley  is  exterminated ;  and  one  barley- 
sowing  will  sometimes  yield  three  or  four  volunteer  crops  that  are 
worth  havesting.  Even  potatoes  will  perpetuate  themselves  in  the 
same  way.  Change  of  crops,  therefore,  is  difficult.  When  the  prob 
lem  accordingly  is  raised,  how  or  by  what  process  exhausted  soils  are 
to  be  restored  in  California,  it  is  not  easy  now  to  answer ;  but  some 
process  will  be  doubtless  discovered  in  due  time.  In  many  cases  this 
exhaustion  will  come  to  pass  slowly ;  for  the  good  soil  is  not  unfre- 
quently  two,  and  three,  and  sometimes  eight  feet  deep.  A  piece  of 
ground  sown  regularly  with  wheat  for  sixteen  years,  has  been  known 
to  yield  forty  bushels  and  more  to  the  acre.  A  single  deep  plowing, 
probably  enough,  would  make  it  good  for  another  sixteen  years. 

As  regards  the  enormous  growths  of  California,  it  should  be  under 
stood  that  they  are  not  ordinary.  The  ordinary  fruits,  for  example, 
are  not  larger  than  ours,  and  where  the  trees  are  overloaded,  are 
commonly  small.  The  extraordinary  growths  appear  to  be  easily  ac 
counted  for.  First,  there  is  a  soil  too  deep  and  rich  for  any  kind  of 
growth  to  measure  it.  Next,  there  is  either  a  natural  under-supply 
of  water,  or  an  artificial  irrigation.  Next,  the  settings  of  fruit  are 
limited.  And  then,  as  no  time  is  lost  in  cloudings  and  rain,  and  the 
sun  drives  on  his  work  unimpeded,  month  by  .month,  the  growth  is 
pushed  to  its  utmost  limit.  So  a  pear  will  occasionally  be  produced 


ITS    CHARACTERISTICS   AND   PROSPECTS.  19 

weighing  three  and  a  half  pounds,  or  an  apple  tree,  or  a  cherry  will 
grow  a  stem  ten  or  twelve  feet  high  in  a  season.  The  mammoth  tur 
nips,  onions,  beets  and  cabbages,  depend  on  a  like  occurrence.  But 
these  are  freaks,  or  extravagances  of  nature  —  only  they  are  such  as 
can  be  equalled  nowhere  else.  The  Big  Trees  depend,  in  part,  on 
these  same  contingencies,  and  partly  on  the  remarkable  longevity  of 
their  species.  A  tree  that  is  watered  without  rain,  having  a  deep 
vegetable  mold  in  which  to  stand,  and  not  so  much  as  one  hour's  um 
brella  of  cloud  to  fence  off  the  sun  for  the  whole  warm  season,  and  a 
capacity  to  live  withal  for  two  thousand  years  or  more,  may  as  well 

trow  three  hundred  and  fifty  or  four  hundred  feet  high  and  twenty- 
ve  feet  in  diameter,  and  show  the  very  centre  point  or  pith  still 
sound,  at  the  age  of  thirteen  hundred  years,  as  to  make  any  smaller 
figure  with  conditions  proportionally  restricted. 

The  agricultural  capacities  of  California,  it  will  be  seen,  are  very 
great  as  regards  the  rate  and  facility  of  production.  The  only  draw 
back  now  experienced  is  in  the  want  of  a  reliable  and  sufficient  market. 
The  mines  and  the  cities  are  now  the  principal  consumers.  The  result 
is,  that  if  the  product  is  a  little  short,  the  prices  rise  extravagantly, 
because  there  is  no  other  supply.  On  the  other  hand,  if  it  is  a  little 
over  the  demand,  the  prices  fall  as  extravagantly.  And  then,  as  the 
producers  are  flying  always  towards  that  which  yields  the  best  reward, 
every  kind  of  product  is  likely  to  be  overgrown  in  its  turn,  and  so  the 
prices  become  even  more  capricious,  for  the  reason  that  they  are  ca 
pricious.  When  markets  are  opened  by  an  outside  commerce,  as  they 
will  be,  and  when  all  the  whaling  ships  are  fitted  and  sent  from  San 
Francisco  and  Puget  Sound,  the  mischief  will  be  repaired.  At  pres 
ent,  owing  to  this  caprice  of  the  market,  agriculture  is  scarcely  less 
of  a  venture  than  mining. 

Accordingly  the  attention  of  land-owners  is  now  being  turned,  more 
than  before,  to  pasturage.  The  old  Spanish  breed  of  cattle  is  giving 
way  to  the  new  cultivated  breeds  most  valued  here,  and  large  ranges 
of  land  are  taken  up  in  the  hill  regions,  where  immense  herds  of  from 
one  to  ten  thousand  head  of  cattle  are  collected,  which  are  yielding  a 
rich  revenue  to  their  owners.  These  herds  are  kept  sometimes  wholly 
without  fodder,  and  generally  with  very  little.  They  fatten  most  in 
the  summer,  when  the  feed  is  dry,  and  only  suffer  when  the  falling 
rains  have  rotted  the  old  growth,  and  have  not  yet  sufficiently  started 
the  new.  Hence  it  is  common  to  burn  over  a  considerable  portion  of 
the  ranges,  just  before  the  rains,  that  the  cattle  may  be  able  to  get 
access  to  the  first  sprouting  of  the  seeds,  at  the  earliest  moment  pos 
sible.  The  air,  accordingly,  is  filled  with  smoke  for  many  days  ;  the 
mountains  are  flaming  round  the  horizon  day  and  night,  as  if  the  last 
day  had  come,  and  horsemen  are  rushing  hither  and  thither  to  fight 
off  the  fires  from  the  wheat  fields  and  the  pastures  of  the  plains.  And 
then  the  result  is,  that  the  yellow,  yellow,  ever  yellow  hills  that  were, 


20  CALIFORNIA, 

as  soon  as  good  rain  has  sprouted  the  seeds,  come  forth  —  green  out 
of  black — and  the  body  of  the  high  burnt  hill  or  mountain,  is  turned 
to  a  beryl,  without  so  much  as  a  twig  or  a  weed-stalk,  to  mar  the 
color.  This  great  interest  of.  pasturage  promises  even  to  exceed  the 
plowing  interest  in  importance.  The  home  market  for  it  is  equally 
reliable,  and  the  salted  and  dried  meats,  the  hides,  the  tallow,  and 
wool,  are  products  that  can  take  the  world  for  their  market. 

The  culture  of  the  grape,  too,  promises  much.  Whether  it  can  be 
successfully  prosecuted  without  irrigation  is  doubtful,  though  it  is  well 
known  that  old,  deep  rooted  vines  will  bear  a  crop  without.  It  is 
commonly  believed  that  California  is  hereafter  to  become  the  great 
wine  growing  country  of  the  Pacific. 

With  so  many  advantages,  it  is  impossible  that  California  should  not 
become  one  of  the  richest  countries  in  the  world,  on  the  score  of  its 
mere  land  interest  and  the  products  yielded  by  its  soil.  It  has  garn 
ered  up  also,  in  the  soil  itself,  treasures  that  no  other  can  boast.  It 
will  take  a  thousand  years  to  wash  over  all  the  pay  dirt  of  the  gold 
mines.  It  is  computed  also  to  have,  in  a  single  quartz  lead,  more 
gold,  five  times  over,  than  is  owned  by  the  whole  world  ;  and  other 
veins  are  being  opened,  almost  every  month,  which  are  ready  to  yield 
great  revenues  of  profits  as  soon  as  they  are  worked.  The  quartz 
mills,  once  supposed  to  be  a  failure,  are  now  so  perfected  as  to  yield 
immense  profits,  almost  without  exception.  The  waters  too  of  the 
mountains  are  a  great  wealth,  and  the  thirty  or  forty  millions  already 
invested  in  the  ditches  ought  to  be  yielding  a  great  revenue,  as  much 
of  it  already  is.  Besides,  there  are  mines  of  quicksilver,  such  as 
make  all  other  mines  in  the  world  comparatively  worthless ;  deposits 
of  borax,  rocks  of  alum,  hills  of  sulphur,  quarries  of  marble,  beds  of 
coal  and  of  iron  —  in  short,  there  was  never  a  country  so  underlaid 
with  treasure  of  every  kind. 

The  commercial  advantages  are  not  yet  developed,  and  will  not  be, 
till  the  Pacific  shores  are  lined  with  new  nations,  and  the  untold  riches 
of  their  natural  resources  are  brought  into  the  circulations  of  trade. 
Even  if  a  railroad  were  built  across  the  continent,  it  is  not  likely  that 
any  very  great  amount  of  merchandise,  or  any  but  the  most  precious 
forms  of  merchandise,  would  pass  that  way.  Probably  there  is  a 
greater  amount  of  expectation  vested  in  such  an  improvement,  than 
the  actual  experiment  will  justify.  The  distance  is  too  great,  the 
grades  too  heavy,  (as  heretofore  reported,)  the  running  expenses  too 
enormous,  to  allow  the  freight  of  common  articles  of  trade.  And  yet 
California  is  on  the  great  water  highway  of  the  Pacific,  and  her  Gate 
the  certain  goal  of  its  travel.  For  it  is  remarkable  that  this  Golden 
Gate  is  at  the  southrnost  limb  of  the  variable  trade  winds,  and  that 
these,  blowing  in  a  little  north  of  east,  will  drive  a  ship  directly  out 
to  China,  directly  in  from  China  —  whichever  way  they  blow  —  laying 
a  straight  course  on  one  of  the  great  circles  of  the  earth  ;  while  im- 


ITS    CHARACTERISTICS   AND   PROSPECTS.  21 

mediately  south  of  the  Gate  the  winds  begin  to  change  character, 
and  are  much  less  available  for  sailing  purposes,  and  continue  to  be 
so,  even  down  as  far  in  the  south  latitude  as  to  Valparaiso.  Thus  to 
sail  a  ship  up  the  western  coast  of  the  continent,  from  Panama  to  San 
Francisco,  would  probably  require  a  whole  summer,  and  even  that 
might  not  suffice  for  the  passage.  No  ship  can  ever  approach  that 
shore  by  sail  without  falling  into  a  contest  with  currents,  which  the 
light  baffling  winds  and  doldrums  make  it  difficult  to  maintain  with 
success.  To  get  in  is  difficult,  to  get  away  more  difficult.  And  hence 
perhaps  it  is,  at  least  in  part,  that  one  may  pass  down  that  whole  stretch 
of  coast,  a  distance  of  three  thousand  miles,  in  one  of  the  California 
steamers,  and  actually  not  see  on  the  passage  so  much  as  a  rag  of 
sail  of  any  description.  On  the  other  hand,  at  Puget  Sound,  the  only 
available  harbor  ground  on  the  north,  the  winds  blow  off  the  coast 
with  such  violence  that  vessels  after  pounding  there  for  weeks  to 
gether,  till  the  crews  were  quite  worn  out,  have  returned  to  San  Fran 
cisco  to  fit  for  a  new  trial.  Besides  in  the  winter-trades,  which  are 
from  the  northeast,  a  vessel  sailing  from  China  for  the  Sound  will  have 
the  whole  distance  to  make  with  a  wind  directly  against  her ;  while 
she  might  lay  her  course  for  San  Francisco  and  straight  in,  without 
once  shifting  her  sails. 

Nature,  it  will  thus  be  seen,  has  set  her  seal  on  San  Francisco,  ap 
pointing  it  to  be  the  great  commercial  centre  of  that  coast  and  ocean. 
Here  rests  the  future  axis  of  motion.  Indeed  it  is  hardly  extravagant 
to  imagine  that,  in  some  distant  age,  when  the  enterprise  and  resources 
of  that  ocean,  with  its  islands  and  coasts,  are  fully  developed,  the 
Atlantic  commerce  will  be  a  thing  by  the  way,  an  affair  of  the  out 
skirts. 

All  such  expectation,  it  is  obvious,  must  depend,  in  a  great  degree, 
on  the  political  and  moral  condition  of  California.  And  here  one  very 
great  danger  happily  is  already  past,  viz.;  the  introduction  of  human 
slavery.  There  is  no  State  in  the  Union  where  slavery  could  be 
worked  to  greater  advantage  than  in  California.  Connected  with  this 
fact,  we  have  also  the  concomitant  fact,  that  the  office  holders  and 
political  operators  of  the  State  have  very  generally  been  men  from  the 
south.  To  understand,  therefore,  even  after  the  fact,  how  it  is  that 
slavery  is  excluded,  is  what  any  stranger  will  accomplish  with  the 
greatest  difficulty.  No  inquiries  he  can  make  will  quite  solve  the 
riddle.  Some  have  spoken  of  the  known  weight  of  laboring  and  money 
making  classes  being  always  opposed  to  slavery,  and  silently  con 
straining  the  politicians,  who  were  not,  to  respect  their  position.  Some 
have  ascribed  much  to  the  personal  influence  of  Colonel  Fremont. 
Others  have  given  the  credit  of  the  fact  mainly  to  Captain  Halleck, 
sometimes  called  the  father  of  the  constitution,  a  gentleman  of  weight 
and  capacity,  who  is  known  to  have  been  the  draughtsman  of  many 
of  its  provisions,  but  has  since  that  time  given  himself  wholly  to  his 


22  CALIFORNIA. 

profession  as  a  lawyer,  and  withdrawn  himself  altogether  from  the 
game  of  political  life.  Be  it  as  it  may,  slavery  is  forever  excluded  from 
California,  and  so  from  that  whole  coast ;  and  that  without  even  so 
much  as  a  word  of  debate ;  for  this  article  of  the  constitution  was 
simply  read  and  passed  by  consent,  in  absolute  silence.  What  a  fact 
of  history,  this,  to  be  the  child  of  silence ! 

California  unites  in  its  population  great  elements  of  diversity.  The 
fifty  thousand  or  sixty  thousand  of  Chinese  simply  stay  as  foreigners. 
The  native  Californian  or  Spanish  race,  comprises  gentlemen  of  real 
respectability,  wealth,  and  character ;  but  the  inferior  class  of  herds 
men  and  retainers  that  were,  are  more  wild  and  vicious,  and  really 
more  hopeless,  than  before  the  change  of  masters.  They  live  on  horse 
back,  without  contracting  any  friendship  with  their  horses,  which  might 
raise  them  a  little.  They  are  cruel  to  animals  of  all  kinds,  cowardly 
to  superiors,  ignorant,  superstitious,  frivolous,  with  little  prospect  of 
being  advanced  to  anything  better  hereafter. 

A  considerable  part  of  the  emigration  to  California  since  we  took 
possession,  is  made  up  of  persons  from  the  extreme  west,  who  crossed 
over  by  the  plains  —  the  class  who  are  call  Border  Ruffians  with  us, 
and  which  there  are  called,  more  or  less  derisively,  Pikes,  from  Pike 
county  in  Missouri.  They  are  by  no  means  any  such  desperate  or 
ruffian  class  of  people  as  they  are  just  now  commonly  regarded  here. 
They  are,  for  the  most  part,  uncultivated  and  rough,  crude  in  their 
notions  of  religion,  and  like  all  such  people,  coarse  in  their  prejudices  ; 
but  they  have  great  honesty  and  frar-Joiess,  their  impulses  are  strong, 
and  generally  magnanimous.  They  really  contain  the  staple  qualities 
or  possibilities  of  a  high  character.  They  have  true  manhood,  which 
is  not  to  be  said  of  every  people. 

Another  element  of  the  emigration  is  from  the  southern  and  south 
western  States,  comprising  many  gentlemen  with  their  families,  who 
are  a  great  accession  to  the  society  and  manners  of  the  cities,  and 
particularly  of  San  Francisco ;  and  with  these  a  much  larger,  or  at 
least  noisier  class  of  broken  down  politicians,  who  have  fled,  as  it  were, 
to  California,  to  farm  the  voters  and  offices  of  a  new  world,  where 
their  stock  of  capital  has  not  yet  been  exhausted.  The  former  class 
comprise  men  who  appear,  like  Mr.  Stanly,  to  have  emigrated  rather 
to  get  away  from  political  life,  and  to  apply  themselves  to  other  pur 
suits.  The  latter,  trained  to  public  speaking  and  the  management  of 
assemblies,  and  having  this  for  their  trade,  have  hitherto  been  able  to 
obtain  almost  all  the  offices  of  the  State,  and  have  distributed  the 
rewards  of  office  to  themselves,  in  a  scale  of  unexampled  liberality. 
Happily  there  was  an  end  to  the  credit  of  the  State,  and  that  limit 
has  been  finally  reached.  The  bankrupt  people,  too,  are  beginning  to 
ask  questions  they  had  no  time  to  ask  before ;  competitors  also  are 
coming  into  the  field,  whose  morality  and  trust  worthiness  in  other 


I 

ITS    CHARACTERISTICS   AND   PROSPECTS.  23 

relations  have  been  already  proved.  The  dynasty  of  plunder,  there 
fore,  is  rapidly  coming  to  an  end. 

Another  large  class  of  the  emigration  is  from  New  England,  New 
York  and  the  middle  and  north-western  States.  And  these  again  are 
in  two  classes.  First,  the  merchants,  bankers,  lawyers,  engineers, 
surveyors,  and  many  of  the  head  miners — men  who  have  come  to  Cal 
ifornia  as  to  a  field  of  enterprise,  and  who  bend  all  their  energies  to 
the  particular  personal  calling  that  engages  them.  Secondly,  a  class 
of  reprobates  in  all  styles  and  degrees,  who  find  their  way  to  Califor 
nia  just  because  they  are  not  wanted  anywhere.  These  are  the 
fugitives  from  justice,  the  absconding  bigamists,  the  felons  and  prison- 
birds  who  want  a  new  field  where  they  are  not  known,  defalcators, 
pimps,  shoulder-strikers  and  prize  fighters,  drunkards,  sons  that  could 
not  be  endured  at  home,  and  vagabond  gentlemen  whose  friends  have 
been  willing  to  escape  the  burden  of  their  support,  by  giving  them  an 
outfit  for  some  very  distant  region.  These  and  such  like  characters 
were  turned  for  a  time,  in  shoals,  upon  California.  But  the  pistol,  the 
knife,  the  halter,  bad  liquors,  and  the  Vigilance  Committees  are  scat 
tering  them  rapidly  and  killing  them  off.  They  flourished  for  a  time, 
as  the  under-fighters  and  ballot-box  operators  of  the  politician  class 
just  referred  to ;  assuming  the  alliance  to  be  one  of  natural  good-fel 
lowship,  inasmuch  as  they  too  use  the  tools  of  honor  themselves.  But 
their  trade  is  gone ;  they  cannot  even  be  drunk  in  the  streets,  or  draw 
a  knife  out  of  their  pocket,  without  a  painfully  certain  prospect  of 
appearing  in  the  chain  gang  the  next  morning.  Meantime,  the  former 
and  better  class  above  named,  with  many  of  the  better  class  from  the 
South,  are  building  churches,  organizing  institutions,  looking  after 
charities,  and  showing  more  and  more  distinctly  that  the  great  hope 
of  California  is  in  them.  They  will  even  consent  to  serve  on  juries, 
and  some  of  them  also  to  be  named  for  public  offices  of  trust  and 
power,  which  formerly  they  would  not.  Time  is  giving  them  the  con 
trolling  position,  as  by  a  kind  of  necessary  process,  and  even  compel 
ling  them  to  assume  it. 

The  composition,  or  the  combined  elements  of  the  emigration,  it  will 
be  seen,  are  not  favorable  to  the  immediate  coalescence  of  the  new 
state,  in  terms  of  order  and  public  virtue.  Besides  a  good  many  hos 
tile  influences  of  a  more  special  character,  it  will  be  easy  to  perceive, 
concur  in  detaining  or  holding  back  the  new  community,  from  the  kind 
of  civil  administration  necessary  to  its  good  name  and  social  comfort. 

Thus,  in  the  mining  towns,  are  gathered  large  bodies  of  men,  with 
out  wives  or  children,  living  as  cenobites  in  their  dens,  and  no  one 
needs  to  be  informed  that  men,  living  separately  from  women,  are  sure 
to  make  a  large  stride  towards  barbarism.  The  occupation  of  mining 
is  also  more  adventurous  in  itself,  than  consists  with  the  best  habits  of 
application  ;  for  if  the  digging  is  a  venture,  why  should  there  not  be 
a  venture  at  the  gaming  table,  without  the  digging  ?  It  is  not  unfre- . 


24  CALIFORNIA, 

quent  that  the  placer  mining  gives  out,  and  it  is  known  to  be  always 
more  or  less  precarious.  Hence  many  of  the  towns  are  mere  encamp 
ments,  and  are  called  "  camps."  And  some  that  assumed  to  be  more 
are  already  given  up  and  nearly  forsaken.  Hence  the  miners  become 
more  or  less  migratory  themselves,  and  their  towns  are  too  nearly  so, 
many  of  them,  to  be  much  cared  for,  either  in  the  building,  or  in  the 
establishment  of  social  and  religious  institutions.  A  stranger,  too, 
will  see  a  very  distinct  and  significant  character  in  the  names  given  to 
places ;  such  as  Yankee  Jim,  Fiddletown,  Jackass'  Gulch,  Whisky 
Bar,  and  a  whole  hundred  names,  of  which  these  are  the  choicer 
specimens.  It  appears  to  be  the  general  opinion,  that  there  is  a 
decided  moral  and  social  improvement  in  the  mining  population.  But 
one  who  has  attended  church  for  two  Sundays,  in  a  mining  town  of  the 
very  first  order,  finding  about  forty  persons  present  to  hear  a  good 
Christian  sermon,  and  passing  in  the  street  when  returning  from  church, 
in  both  cases  full  five  hundred  men,  who  had  rushed  together  as  spec 
tators  of  a  street  fight,  will  hardly  think  it  possible  that  there  should 
have  been  a  very  great  moral  improvement  there. 

Agriculture,  too,  has  been  connected  in  California  with  unwonted 
and  even  wholly  peculiar  causes  of  moral  deterioration.  The  titles  to 
land  have  many  of  them  been  so  uncertain,  or  so  far  unsettled  by 
frauds  and  charges  of  fraud,  that  there  has  been  a  natural  reluctance 
in  emigrants  to  incur  the  risk  of  a  loss,  in  purchasing  the  soil.  Hence, 
also  in  part,  the  very  peculiar  kind  of  squatting  that  has  come  into 
vogue  in  California  and  probably  a  full  half  of  the  agriculture  of  the 
State,  either  now  or  at  some  former  time,  has  been  carried  on  as  an 
operation  of  squatting  in  this  manner,  viz.,  by  taking  possession  of 
lands  generally  known  to  be  vested  in  private  owners  by  title  derived 
from  the  Mexican  government,  and  not  in  the  United  States  as  in 
other  new  territories,  where  the  laws  of  Congress  authorize  the  occu 
pation  and  make  it  a  legitimate  act.  An  American  purchaser,  for 
example,  buys  one  of  the  old  Mission  properties,  comprising  a  tract 
seven  or  eight  miles  square,  of  the  very  best  land  in  California,  and 
everybody  knows  the  title  to  be  perfect,  because  the  land  has  been 
held  and  occupied  by  the  Mission  for  more  than  fifty  years.  He  ex 
pends  over  1100,000  in  fencing  it,  and  the  property  rises  in  value  so 
rapidly,  that  he  begins  to  be  rated  and  to  rate  himself  as  being  worth, 
at  least  a  million  dollars.  But  behold,  a  cloud  of  squatters  suddenly 
appears  pouring  in  upon  his  lands,  squatting  inside  of  his  fences  and 
among  his  wheat,  erecting  their  tents  or  huts,  and  leaving  him  to  pay 
the  taxes,  while  they  reap  the  harvests.  He  is  now  the  bankrupt  pur 
chaser,  and  they  are  the  occupants,  till  at  least  six  or  eight  years  of 
litigation,  terminated  at  Washington,  have  established  the  title  to  his 
creditors,  which  everybody  knew  was  in  himself.  Meantime  they  have 
gotten  the  use  of  the  rent  for  so  many  years,  which  is  to  them  a 
handsome  outfit.  The  old  native  Californians  are  treated  in  the  same 


ITS   CHARACTERISTICS  AND  PROSPECTS.  25 

way.  No  chapter  of  wrong  and  oppression,  in  which  our  countrymen 
have  had  their  part,  is  more  sad  or  revolting.  Even  between  the  old 
ranchero's  house  and  wall,  the  squatter  has  taken  his  post  and  set  up 
his  hut.  Then,  assuming  also  that  the  cattle  are  wild,  as  that  the 
lands  are  public,  the  squatter  wanting  a  steak  has  taken  his  rifle  and 
killed  an  ox.  And  so  the  poor  herdsman  has  been  stripped  both  of 
lands  and  herds,  by  the  remorseless  Sabeans,  and  that  with  airs  of  in 
dignity  and  low-bred  consequence  more  difficult  to  bear  than  the  rob 
beries  themselves.  The  truculent  savage  spirit  generated  by  these 
land-piracies,  will  be  readily  understood.  The  tragedy  of  young  Sunole 
is  happily  an  extreme  instance.  He  was  a  gentleman,  educated  as  we 
have  heard  in  Paris,  equal  if  not  superior  to  most  of  the  educated 
Americans.  But  he  ventured  to  remonstrate  very  gently  with  a  squat 
ter  for  cutting  down  the  trees  of  his  father's  exquisite  valley,  and  sell 
ing  them  for  wood,  giving  ,him  liberty  at  the  same  time,  to  cut 
what  he  wanted  for  himself ;  but  the  next  time  he  passed  by,  on  his 
way  over  the  ranch  in  company  with  a  friend,  the  savage  came  out 
with  his  rifle,  got  him  in  range  as  he  threw  himself  over  the  side  of 
his  horse,  and  drew  him  dead  to  the  ground.  Sheltered  and  secreted 
by  others  like  himself,  he  could  never  be  found.  As  the  titles  are 
now  being  settled  by  the  decisions  of  the  courts,  the  squatters  are  grad 
ually  yielding  to  the  law  and  becoming  purchasers.  All  these  wrongs 
will  gradually  be  a  thing  of  the  past.  Bancroft  Libraiy. 

By  the  very  latest  advices,  it  appears  that  the  squatter  combination 
is  just  beginning  to  yield  some  respect  to  the  decisions  of  law.  Here 
tofore  the  owners,  in  establishing  their  title,  have  commonly  got  pos 
session,  but  only  a  right  to  pay  the  taxes.  Indeed,  this  third  estate 
of  squatterdom  had  sufficient  power  in  the  legislature,  two  years  ago, 
to  get  a  law  enacted  requiring  owners,  when  dislodging  or  ejecting 
them,  to  pay  for  the  improvements  according  to  the  appraisal  of  a 
committee  from  the  precinct ;  a  plan  by  which  they  expected  to  get 
back  the  value  of  the  land,  for  the  appraisers  would  be  squatters  almost 
of  course.  Happily  the  courts  would  not  execute  the  law.  And  but 
a  year  since,  the  venerable  patriarch  of  the  Napa  valley,  who  came 
over  from  Missouri  as  a  trapper  more  than  forty  years  ago,  having 
finally  established  his  old  homestead  title,  comprising  eight  or  ten 
thousand  acres  of  the  best  land  in  the  State,  was  evidently  beginning 
also  to  find  a  much  harder  question  on  his  hands,  viz.,  how  to  move  the 
squatters  without  periling  his  life.  And  yet,  among  the  land-pirates 
called  squatters,  are  a  great  many  persons  from  the  East,  and  even 
from  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut ;  and  what  is  more,  from  our 
Christian  churches  ;  and  some  of  them  appear  even  now  to  be  seriously 
minded  and  conscientious  in  their  life.  Because  the  same  word,  squat 
ter,  is  used  to  designate  this  known  act  of  robbery,  (for  it  is  often  such 
and  nothing  else,)  they  really  suppose  that  they  are  doing  the  same 


26 

lawful  and  right  thing,  which  is  practised  under  the  acts  of  Congress, 
in  the  West. 

As  the  mining  and  agriculture  of  California  appear,  thus  far,  to  have 
been  connected  with  unpropitious  moral  influences,  so  also  it  has  been, 
even  to  a  much  greater  degree,  with  the  trade  of  politics.  Composed 
of  elements  so  various  and  repellant,  it  was  not  to  be  expected,  for  a 
time,  that  there  would  be  much  confidence  in  public  men  or  proceed 
ings.  And  the  moral  character  of  the  political  operators  and  office 
holders,  was  generally  of  a  kind  not  to  inspire  confidence.  They  were 
gamblers,  debauchees,  drunkards,  men  who  lined  their  bosoms  not  with 
virtue,  but  with  knives  and  pistols.  They  were  just  such  men,  in  short, 
as  could  never  be  in  confidence,  even  if  they  violated  no  trust.  The 
bullies  they  had  in  their  employ,  as  inspectors  of  the  ballot,  could  not 
swear  to  a  true  count  and  be  believed.  Juries  were  distrusted,  be 
cause  the  panel  was  so  easily  made  up,  to  include  one  whom  the  crim 
inal  on  trial  might  "  hang  "  to  stand  out  for  him  in  the  verdict.  The 
judges  were  such  characters  that  they  plainly  ought  to  be  bribed,  if 
they  were  not.  Administrators  and  trustees  were  suspected,  as  being 
appointed  by  the  connivance  of  judges.  Legislators  and  governors 
were  distrusted  also.  This  distrust  became,  in  due  time,  a  torment  to 
the  public  peace,  by  its  uncertainty  ;  and  none  the  less  a  torment  that 
the  worst  rumors  and  suspicions  were  most  likely  to  be  true  ;  till  finally 
everything  bad  began  to  be  true  ;  and  the  public  prints  made  it  a  point 
of  heroism  in  dealing  out  their  accusations  with  unsparing  boldness. 
A  stranger  could  hardly  guess  what  it  meant.  Every  print  was  for 
California.  Nothing  too  laudatory  could  be  said  for  it ;  meanwhile,  as 
if  a  paradasaic  whole  could  be  made  up  of  diabolical  particulars,  the 
sweeping  denunciations  of  individuals  appeared  to  leave  no  honest  man 
in  it.  And  what  was  more  remarkable  in  all  these  accusations,  was 
that  every  charge  made  against  judges  or  others  of  bribery  or  of  fraud 
was  given  circumstantially ;  names,  dates,  amounts,  agents,  all  stated 
with  exactness.  Probably  a  very  considerable  share  of  these  charges 
of  bribery,  and  perjury,  and  fraud,  were  true.  But  the  misery  was, 
that  no  one  could  guess  which.  Society  was  dissolved  and  law  was 
reduced  to  an  instrument  of  suspicion.  It  was  a  state  most  bitter  and 
even  horrible.  Whether  their  facts  were  only  suspicions  and  rumors 
converted  into  facts  by  repetition,  or  real  and  veritable  truths  of  his 
tory  ;  whether  it  was  the  licentiousness  of  the  press  or  its  uncommon 
fidelity,  or  whether,  possibly,  it  was  not  all  the  fatality  which  attends 
every  community  where  confidence  is  gone,  no  one  could  know,  or  sat 
isfactorily  judge.  Be  it  as  it  may,  out  of  this  general  distrust  and 
demoralization  came  the  Vigilance  Committee.  It  was  raised  by  the 
torture  that  exasperates  society  when  confidence  is  gone.  So  far  not 
to  sympathize  with  it  is  impossible,  and  the  more  that  almost  all  the 
better  citizens  were  in  it.  Even  Christian  professors  left  the  church 
and  the  communion  to  be  in  the  outbreak,  and  to  bear  arms  in  that 


ITS   CHARACTERISTICS   AND   PROSPECTS.  27 

vast  congregation,  gathered  as  a  thunder-cloud  round  the  jail,  on  the 
distant  hill  side. 

It  is  not  our  design  to  discuss  the  Committee.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
their  intent  was  good,  their  proceedings  honest  and  carefully  deliber 
ate,  and  their  military  conduct  admirably  decisive  and  efficient.  Their 
great  fault  was  that  they  did  not  see  their  point  exactly,  and  offered 
reasons  for  their  action  a  great  deal  worse  than  their  action.  If  they 
had  undertaken,  not  to  administer  the  laws,  or  take  them  back  into 
their  own  hands,  but  to  restore  the  laws  by  plucking  down  the  usurp 
ers,  who  stood  in  no  right  of  law,  being  elected  only  by  the  perjury  of 
the  inspectors,  their  question  would  have  been  greatly  simplified. 
Then,  because  of  the  almost  impossibility  of  convicting  the  perjured 
inspectors,  by  any  ordinary  proceedings  of  law,  they  would  only  have 
done  it  by  extraordinary ;  and  it  would  have  been  all  the  better  if,  to 
make  a  due  impression  of  this  crime,  as  the  greatest  of  all  crimes,  they 
had  sacked  the  whole  tribe,  be  they  many  or  few,  and  sunk  them  in 
the  bottom  of  the  Bay.  Doing  this,  instead  of  resuming  functions,  the 
right  of  which  strikes  at  the  root  of  all  constitutional  government,  they 
need  only  have  insisted  on  some  extraordinary  means  of  restoring 
functions  already  taken  away.  The  whole  experiment  was  critical, 
more  critical  than  our  eastern  communities  know  ;  for  there  was  a  time, 
a  terrible  twelve  hours,  just  after  the  release  of  Judge  Terry,  when  the 
question  of  a  new  Executive  Committee,  who  should  be  more  efficient 
and  bolder,  i.  e.,  more  bloody,  was  pending  and  apparently  just  ready 
to  be  carried  by  the  whirlwind  of  passion  outside,  which  new  commit 
tee,  if  it  had  not  been  dexterously  avoided,  would  have  been  like  the 
new  committee  of  Paris,  and  similar  scenes  would  probably  have  fol 
lowed.  The  escape  was  narrow  ;  so  narrow  that  if  the  leading  gentle 
men  concerned  had  now  the  question  of  a  new  Vigilance  Committee 
on  hand,  they  would  probably  hesitate  long.  And  yet  it  must  be 
granted  for  the  honor  of  this  same  questionable,  perilous  adventure  of 
reform,  that  San  Francisco  is  probably  now  the  best  governed  city  in 
the  Union.  The  laws  are  now  enforced,  the  economies  are  duly  at 
tended  to,  there  is  no  plunder,  and  every  evil  doer  stands  in  fear.  It 
is  the  beginning,  apparently,  of  a  great  moral  reaction,  which  is  felt  by 
the  whole  State.  Whatever  may  be  true,  therefore,  of  this  great  pop 
ular  movement,  whether  it  is  right  or  wrong,  wise  or  unwise,  it  will  be 
impossible  ever  to  turn  it  as  a  reproach  on  the  certainly  patriotic  men 
who  were  foremost  in  it.  They  are  much  more  likely  to  be  celebrated 
hereafter,  with  Harmodius  and  Aristogiton,  and  other  great  leaders  of 
mutiny  that  have  been  deliverers  of  their  country. 

We  state  these  facts  concerning  the  moral  aspects  of  mining ;  the 
occupation  by  force  of  lands  known  to  be  held  by  legal  right ;  and  the 
usurpations,  and  perjuries,  and  briberies  of  political  intriguers  and  dem 
agogues,  connected  with  the  general  destruction  of  confidence,  and  the 
necessary  throes  of  violence  by  which  they  must  inevitably  be  redress- 


28 


ed,  not  as  being,  in  themselves,  any  picture  of  California.  We  know 
they  are  not.  They  are  only  facts,  without  which  any  description  is 
rose  colored  and  without  sound  verity — such  facts  as  will  meet  a  stran 
ger  first,  because  they  are  most  outstanding  and  impressive.  And  for 
this  the  reader  will  make  due  allowance,  even  as  in  reading  history  ; 
for  it  is  not  the  virtues,  and  the  smooth  and  silent  Sowings  of  goodness 
that  make  up  ever  the  staple  of  history,  but  the  explosive  wrongs  and 
outrages  rather,  by  which  the  evenness  of  good  was  disturbed.  For 
ourselves,  we  regard  these  facts  not  with  any  feelings  of  despair  or  dis 
couragement.  On  the  contrary,  we  perceive  a  certain  sublimity  in 
the  contest  here  begun,  and  the  clearing  process  going  forward,  which 
creates  appetite  to  us.  We  know  the  certain  victory,  we  see  it  com 
ing,  and  we  envy  especially  those  young  heroic  spirits  who  have  set 
themselves,  in  the  love  of  God  and  their  newly  adopted  State,  to  such 
works  of  duty  and  sacrifice  as  are  necessary  to  the  sublime  future  they 
have  in  prospect. 

Opposite  to  these  facts  we  have  stated  others  which  awaken  our  re 
spect  and  inspire  our  confidence.  They  have  a  good  and  able  minis 
try,  for  example,  such  a  ministry  as  will  compare  favorably,  in  all 
denominations,  with  any  of  the  older  States.  They  have  churches  in 
every  denomination,  not  inferior  to  the  churches  here.  The  attend 
ance  is  good,  especially  in  the  cities,  and  the  order,  the  dress,  the 
music,  are  only  too  much  evened  by  the  manner  of  the  East. 

The  Sabbath  also  is  becoming  a  more  established  institution,  and  to 
be  without  a  Sabbath,  as  a  day  of  rest,  is  more  and  more  distinctly 
felt  to  be  an  oppression.  And  therefore  the  traders  and  shopkeepers, 
in  most  of  the  country  villages,  are  petitioning  the  Legislature,  more 
earnestly  every  year,  for  the  establishment  of  a  complete  suspension 
of  trade. 

Education  is  not  forgotten.  The  towns  and  cities  are  allowed  by 
statute  to  tax  themselves  for  this  purpose,  and  many  of  them  do  it 
most  liberally.  The  public  schools  of  San  Francisco  are  not  inferior 
to  those  of  our  Eastern  cities — many  think  them  even  superior. 

There  is  no  reason  to  apprehend  any  loss  of  natural  vigor  and  tone 
from  the  climate  on  that  shore.  Some  have  taken  it  as  a  bad  indica 
tion  that  the  Digger  Indians  (the  aboriginals  of  California)  are  the 
most  spiritless  and  abject  of  all  known  tribes  on  the  continent,  and 
about  the  lowest  specimens  of  humanity  found  upon  the  earth.  But 
this  may  be  sufficiently  accounted  for  by  the  general  softness  of  the 
climate  and  the  fact  that  they  have  never  been  required  to  feed  them 
selves  by  the  manly  exploits  of  a  hunter  life  ;  having  always  at  hand 
enough  of  bugs,  and  fish,  and  sugar  pine  bark,  to  serve  their  purpose. 
Sometimes  also  a  degree  of  discouragement  has  been  derived  from  the 
analogical  or  symbolical  fact,  that  there  is  not  a  stick  of  smart,  hard 
timber  in  all  California ;  nothing  out  of  which  an  axe-handle,  or  a 
spoke,  or  a  felloe  could  be  made  ;  every  hardest,  soundest  tree,  being 


ITS   CHARACTERISTICS   AXD   PROSPECTS.  29 

brittle  to  such  a  degree  ("  brash,"  they  say  in  California,  and  in  New 
England  "  spalt")  that  the  trunk  will  probably  break  asunder  five  or 
six  times  when  it  is  felled,  and  lie  as  a  ]3ile  of  fragments  on  the  ground, 
even  though  it  is  three  feet  in  diameter.  Is  this  a  natural  token,  some 
have  asked  with  a  little  feeling  of  superstition,  that  the  future  men  of 
California  are  to  be  only  a  brittle  or  brash  stock,  and  without  any  real 
timber  of  endurance  in  them  ?  Why  any  more  a  token  than  the  giant 
pines,  and  redwoods,  and  cedars,  are  a  token  of  prodigiously  tall  men, 
a  race  at  least  twelve  or  fifteen  feet  high  ?  Why  any  more  than  the 
often  naked  hills  and  plains  are  a  token  of  no  men  at  all  ?  What  oth 
er  sign  do  we  in  fact  require  that  all  the  future  stock  of  California  will 
be  a  stock  of  high  capacity,  than  that  the  climate  is  healthy,  the 
growths  bountiful,  and  that  we  are  capable  ourselves  of  the  greatest 
endurance  there,  both  bodily  and  mental,  and  have,  in  fact,  a  sense  of 
robustness  that  we  have  nowhere  else  ? 

At  the  same  time  it  requires  no  gift  of  prophecy  to  perceive  in  the 
physical  resources  and  commercial  advantages  of  the  country,  that  an 
immense  wealth  is,  in  due  time,  to  be  developed  there ;  such  wealth  as 
will  give  vigor  to  ah1  institutions  and  works  that  require  expense,  and 
put  everything  on  a  scale  of  breadth  and  magnificence.  If  there  is 
any  country  in  the  world  where  the  future  men  are  not  to  be  cramped 
and  whittled  by  close  restrictions,  it  is  California.  At  present  the 
Californians  say  that  they  are  poor ;  they  feel  poor,  because  they  are 
now  at  the  dead  point  of  retrocession,  where  their  extravagant  ex 
pectations  are  being  shortened  in  for  that  second  beginning  which 
every  new  State  and  city  has  to  make.  And  yet  there  is  nothing 
more  wonderful,  with  all  this  depression,  than  the  amount  of  wealth 
already  created  on  that  shore.  How  many  thousand  years  of  day 
labor,  has  it  taken  simply  to  build  so  many  houses,  fences,  shops, 
steamers,  ditches,  towns,  and  cities.  Three  of  these  cities,  San  Fran 
cisco,  Sacramento,  and  Marysville,  have  so  much  of  city  life  and 
character  that  we  hardly  recognize  their  newness.  And  yet  only 
nine  years  have  passed  since  all  this  immense  wealth  began  to  be  cre 
ated  ! —  and  that  five  thousand  miles  away,  on  the  shore,  as  it  were, 
of  another  continent. 

There  is*  good  and  cultivated  society  in  California  such  as  there 
never  has  been  in  any  other  State  in  the  Union.  The  number  of 
liberally  educated  men  is  greater  by  far  than  was  ever  found  in  any 
other  State  twice  the  same  political  age.  Carpets,  good  beds,  clean 
tables,  bright  knives  and  forks,  courtesy,  hospitality,  public  entertain 
ments  and  pleasures  on  a  footing  of  civilizotion — all  these  indications 
of  comfort  and  society  are  widely  diffused.  One  sign  or  token  of  this 
kind  we  cannot  forbear  to  mention,  because  it  signifies  much.  Passing 
hither  and  thither  on  the  little  steamers,  up  to  Marysville,  to  Stock 
ton,  to  the  towns  north  of  the  bay,  where  often  the  number  ef  passen 
gers  did  not  exceed  thirty,  we  have  seen,  again  and  again,  a  table 


"%•       *  4    Ji^  '•" 
30  CALIFORNIA, 

most  neatly  set,  the  silver  bright  and  clean,  the  meats  well  prepared 
and  good,  without  any  nonsense  of  show  dishes,  the  servants  tidy, 
quiet,  and  respectful  —  in  short,  the  whole  figure  of  the  entertainment 
more  rational  and  better  than  we  have  ever  seen,  either  on  the  boats 
of  the  Mississippi  or  the  Atlantic  coast.  Such  facts  indicate  society, 
more  than  any  most  splendid  entertainment  gotten  up  by  private  opu 
lence  can. 

One  other  consideration  must  be  named,  if  California  is  to  be  well 
understood,  viz :  that  with  all  the  violence  and  savage  wrongs,  and 
dark  vices  that  have  heretofore  abounded  there,  they  seldom  do  a 
mean  thing.  They  can  perpetrate  real  atrocities,  but  they  must  be 
generous.  A  considerable  part  of  their  blameable  profusions  comes  of 
their  extreme  jealousy  of  littleness,  or  meanness.  Men  really  poor 
will  often  share  their  last  dollar  in  helping  a  sick  friend,  or  even  a  sick 
stranger.  If  a  poor  minister,  whom  they  have  only  seen  at  their 
funerals,  is  known  to  be  on  short  allowance,  they  will  have  a  ticketed 
supper,  not  unlikely,  to  him ;  which,  if  it  is  not  the  best  way  of  estab 
lishing  religion,  does  at  least  show  their  generosity.  If  a  preacher 
asks  the  privilege  of  addressing  them  in  a  gambling  saloon,  on  Sun 
day,  they  are  very  likely  to  accede,  to  hear  him  respectfully,  pass 
round  a  hat  and  make  up  a  liberal  purse  for  him,  then  put  clown  their 
stakes  and  resume  their  play !  The  recent  vote  of  the  people  to  as 
sume  and  pay  the  State  debt  was  an  act  of  pure  magnanimity.  Here 
was  a  debt  of  15,000,000,  the  creation  of  which  was  expressly  forbidden 
by  the  Constitution  of  the  State.  This  provision  of  the  Constitution 
was  known,  discussed,  openly  understood,  and  the  loan  was  obtained 
directly  in  the  face  of  it.  The  money,  too,  had  gone  for  nothing  but 
to  feed  the  political  vampires  for  whose  plunder  it  was  raised ;  and  the 
State  has  not  a  vestige  of  property  to  show  for  it,  but  some  old 
benches  that  belonged  to  the  State  House  at  Vallejo.  If  then  a 
people  *have  any  right,  by  Constitution,  to  guard  themselves  against 
being  plundered  by  their  rulers,  the  people  of  California  had  a  right 
to  stand  upon  the  restriction  so  prudently  established  in  their  Consti 
tution,  and  were  under  no  obligations,  wrhether  of  right  or  of  honor, 
to  pay  this  debt — to  refuse  was  no  act  of  repudiation.  But  their 
instincts  were  too  generous,  they  had  too  much  pride  of  feeling  to  in 
sist  on  their  right.  Where  Mississippi  raised  a  quibble  to  get  off  her 
honest  debt,  California  took  a  gratuitous  obligation  to  get  it  on,  and  to 
fasten  it. 

There  remains  a  single  topic  to  which,  in  the  conclusion  of  our  arti 
cle,  already  too  far  extended,  we  must  briefly  refer,  viz :  to  the  effort 
now  on  foot  to  establish  a  College  or  University  in  California.  The 
heaviest  detraction,  after  all,  from  the  future  prospects  of  California,  is 
in  the  fact  that  so  many  only  go  thither  as  adventurers,  not  meaning 
to  stay,  and  that  so  many,  often  the  most  prosperous,  are  continually 
returning.  And  they  do  it,  in  great  part,  because  they  cannot  edu 
cate  their  families  there,  as  their  means  allow  them  to  desire.  In  the 


ITS    CHARACTERISTICS   AND   PROSPECTS.  31 

first  place,  many  never  take  out  their  families  for  this  reason,  and  in 
the  next  place,  when  they  have  done  it,  and  their  sons  are  grown  up 
to  the  age  at  which  they  begin  to  want  the  best  advantages,  they 
return  with  them,  and  are  so  lost  to  the  State  as  a  family  ;  for  the 
distance,  and  the  moral  perils  of  a  separation  from  parents  are  so  great, 
that  there  is  no  alternative  but  a  reemigration.  This  begets  an  unset 
tled  feeling  in  those  who  remain,  which  makes  them  careless  often  of 
the  good  of  the  State,  and  besides  it  carries  off  a  large  per  centage  of 
the  wealth  created  ;  for  the  families  that  return  are  commonly  such  as 
have  been  most  successful,  and  all  which  they  have  gained  they  carry 
with  them.  And  the  probability  is,  that  if  the  contemplated  railroad 
were  built  across  the  continent,  (which  it  will  not  be  for  a  long  time  to 
come,)  it  would  scarcely  help  them  at  all,  but  might  rather  hasten 
them  in  this  losing  process. 

What  they  want,  therefore,  at  this  time,  above  all  things  else,  is  a 
good  College,  or  University.  Such  an  institution  would  do  more  to 
consolidate  and  settle  their  State,  and  to  settle  the  confidence  of  their 
future,  than  even  the  railroad  itself.  There  are  no  five  States  together, 
in  our  western  world,  which,  if  they  had  none  at  all,  would  want  an 
institution  of  this  kind  so  much  as  California.  For  the  supply  of  this 
want,  some  of  their  best  and  ablest  men  are  preparing.  They  have 
had  a  charter  for  three  years,  organizing  the  "  College  of  California." 
Their  Board  of  Trustees  contains  a  representation  of  all  the  Christian 
denominations,  who  are  united  in  cordiality  and  good  understanding. 
They  are  said  lately  to  have  fixed  on  their  site — on  the  eastern  side  of 
the  Bay,  opposite  San  Francisco.  They  have  had  a  preparatory  school 
for  three  years  past,  under  the  tuition  of  Rev.  Henry  Durant,  an 
accomplished  scholar  and  a  Christian,  and  the  design  is  to  organize  a 
Freshman  Class  the  coming  autumn. 

What  then  is  now  wanted  is  the  endowment,  and  for  this  everything 
is  ready.  To  obtain  this  endowment  in  California,  except  in  part,  will 
now  be  impossible.  Much  of  the  wealth  is  not  in  the  right  hands  ;  and 
where  it  is  not,  where  there  is  every  disposition  to  aid,  the  possibility 
is  very  much  reduced  by  the  heavy  loads  of  debt,  which  many  who 
ought  to  be  rich  are  required  just  now  to  carry.  When  money  will 
bring  three  per  cent,  per  month,  year  by  year,  on  perfect  security, 
the  lending  party  is  not  likely  to  put  much  of  it  in  a  College,  and  the 
borrowing  party  still  less.  Are  there  no  great  men  in  the  East,  no 
millionaires  or  less  in  computation,  who  will  be  induced  to  look  at  such 
an  opportunity  ?  Had  we  the  fortune  of  but  half  a  million  in  our 
editorial  hands,  we  are  quite  sure  of  this,  that  whoever  might  want  to 
assume  the  endowment  of  such  an  institution  would  have  to  be  very 
quick  in  his  action,  or  he  would  lose  the  chance.  What  an  opportunity 
for  a  man  of  fortune,  who  has  no  object  in  life,  no  family  to  provide  for, 
or  none  but  such  as  are  already  rich  enough,  and  who  would  be  greatly 
more  ennobled,  by  his  name  and  example,  as  the  founder  of  such  an 
institution,  than  by  all  his  property  without  a  name.  How  many  such 


32  CALIFORNIA,   ITS    CHARACTERISTICS   AND   PROSPECTS. 

too,  are  there,  who  are  really  meaning,  when  they  die,  to  accomplish 
some  great  work  with  their  money  !  Why  not  do  it  when  they  are 
living,  and  have  a^  satisfaction  of  a  consciousness  enriched,  and  a  heart 
enlarged  by  their  beneficence  ?  To  have  one's  name  on  such  an  insti 
tution  as  this,  connected  with  the  great  history,  and  with  all  the  learn 
ing,  and  all  the  most  forward  influences  of  this  New  World  on  the 
Pacific,  is  a  thought  which  might  quicken  the  blood  even  of  a  man 
most  sluggish  and  dull.  For  it  is  to  win  a  greater  honor,  by  many 
times,  than  the  President  of  our  great  Republic.  That  is  an  honor, 
which,  as  the  line  grows  longer,  loses  more  and  more  its  significance, 
till  finally,  it  will  signify  as  little  to  have  been  one  of  the  Presidents 
as  to  have  been  one  of  the  Doges  of  Venice.  But  the  other,  like  the 
names  of  Harvard  and  Yale,  will  brighten  and  gather  to  itself  a 
greater  weight  and  power,  as  long  as  the  tongue  itself  may  exist. 
And  the  satisfaction  one  may  have  in  this  honor  is  sublimely  justified 
in  the  fact,  that  he  is  not  merely  to  be  known,  or  mentioned  in  the 
future  ages  of  the  world  —  that  might  be  a  very  common  ambition, 
for  who  is  there  who  does  even  naturally  desire  as  much  ? —  but  is 
permitted  to  know  that  his  name  is  to  be  a  power,  and  to  work  for  all 
the  coming  ages,  growing  brighter  and  doing  more  good  than  he  him 
self  while  living.  That  is  a  legitimate  and  glorious  ambition  ^—  the 
highest  that  a  mortal  can  cherish.  The  Trustees,  in  the  Appeal  they 
published  a  year  ago,  placed  the  subject  thus : 

"  Could  some  rich  citizen,  who  can  do  it  without  injury  to  himself, 
step  forward  at  this  time  of  our  beginning,  and  set  his  name  upon  the 
institution,  itself,  by  the  side  of  a  Harvard  or  a  Yale,  by  subscribing  a 
large  part  of  the  proposed  endowment ;  giving  us  an  opportunity,  as 
sisted  by  his  beginning  and  example,  to  carry  up  the  subscription  even 
to  the  highest  point  we  have  named,  he  would  be  enriched  by  the 
sense  of  his  munificence,  as  no  man  ever  was  or  can  be  by  the  count 
of  his  money.  We  have  no  delicacy  in  respect  to  the  customary 
honors  conferred  by  universities,  when  they  set  the  names  of  the  ben 
efactors  on  the  halls,  libraries  and  professorships  endowed  by  their 
munificence  ;  or  when  they  drop  the  dry,  impersonal  name  of  their 
charter  for  one  that  represents  the  public  spirit,  and  the  living  heart 
of  a  living  man  who  could  be  more  than  rich,  the  patron  of  learning, 
the  benefactor  and  father  of  coming  ages.  There  are  monuments 
that  may  well  provoke  a  degree  of  ambition  ;  not  even  an  Egyptian 
pyramid  raised  over  a  man's  ashes  could  so  far  ennoble  him,  as  to 
have  the  learning  and  science  of  long  ages  and  eternal  realms  of  his 
tory  superscribed  to  his  name.  And  yet  this  better  kind  of  monu 
ment  is  itself  a  power  so  beneficent,  that  he  ought,  even  as  duty,  to 
desire  it,  and  for  no  false  modesty  decline  it.  Such  monuments  are 
not  like  those  of  stone  or  brass,  which  simply  stand  doing  nothing ; 
they  are  monuments  eternally  fruitful,  showing  to  men's  eyes  and 
ears  what  belongs  to  wealth,  and  what  the  founders  of  the  times  gone 
by  have  set  as  examples  of  beneficence." ^S^\&* 

TTxr-nrr/RSlTY 


THE    NOISY    CARRIERS' 

BOOK  &  STATIONERY 


Commercial  Street,  between  Montgomery  and  Leidesdorff  Streets, 

Nail  Francisco. 

THOMAS  N.  I1IBBEN  having  withdrawn  from  the  Noisy  Carriers'  Book  and 
Stationery  Co.,  the  balance  of  the  Company  will  continue  the  "business  as  heretofore. 
and  will  keep  constantly  on  hand  a  large  assortment  of 


to  be  sold  cheap  for  cash. 

CHAS.    P.    KIMBALL,   Pres. 


PACIFIC    FOUNDRY 

A  N  D 

M  A.  C  H I  ^  E     SHOP. 

FIRST   STREET,   BETWEEN    MISSION   AND   HOWARD   STREETS. 

GODDARD    &     CO., 

Grateful  to  their  numerous  friends  for  their  liberal  patronage,  are  constantly  making 
additions  to  their  extensive  works.  Among  these  is  a  POWERFUL  STEAM  HAM 
MER,  which  enables  them  to  execute  the  largest  and  heaviest  Forge  Works,  cheaper 
than  at  any  other  establishment  in  the  city ;  and  they  can,  with  the  greatest  confidence, 
announce  to  the  public  the  best  Foundry  and  Machine  Shop  on  the  Pacific  coast.  With 
the  largest  assortment  of  PATTERNS,  and  new  ones  constantly  making,  wre  can 
«  execute  orders  on  the  shortest  notice,  for 


HIGH   AND    LOW    PRESSURE; 

Quartz  Mills  of  every  Model,  and  Stampers  of  White  Iron, 

superior  to  any  for  this  use,  and  imported  only  by  ourselves. 

Mining;  Pumps  of  all  kinds;  Flouring  Hills,  Gang,  Sash,  Muley 
and  Circular  Saw  Mills, 

SHINGLE  MACHINES,  cutting  24,000  per  day,  and  more  perfectly  than  any  other 
in  use;  CAR  \VIIEELS  and  AXLES,  of  all  dimensions ;  BUILDING  FRONTS, 
ROUND,  SQUARE  and  FLUTED  COLUMNS  ;  BALCONY  RAILINGS  ;  HORSE 
POWERS ;  STOVE  and  PLOW  CASTINGS ;  RETORTS,  GRATE  BARS, 
RANGE  PLATES,  BOILER  FRONTS,  WATER  BACKS,  WHEELBARROW 
WHEELS,  SMUT  MILLS,  SASH  WEIGHTS,  BRASS  WORK;  and  indeed, 
CASTINGS  and  MACHINERY  of  every  description  whatever. 
All  Work  Warranted  according  to  Order. 

Orders  from  the  Country,  by  Express  or  otherwise,  with  a  remittance  or  satisfactory 
reference,  will  be  promptly  filled. 

GODDARD  &  CO. 


